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BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

HANDBOOK OF PSYCHOLOGY : Vol. I, Senses and 
Intellect. Second Edition, 1891. New York. Holt 
& Co.; London, Macmillan. 

HANDBOOK OF PSYCHOLOGY; Vol. II. Feeling 
AND Will. 1892. Same publishers. 

ELEMENTS OF PSYCHOLOGY. 1893. Same pub- 
lishers. Second Edition, tenth thousand. Spanish 
translation. 

MENTAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE CHILD 

AND THE RACE. New York and London, Macmillan. 
1895. Third Edition, seventh printing, 1907. German 
and French Translations. 
DEVELOPMENT AND EVOLUTION. Same pub- 
lishers, ig02. 

SOCIAL AND ETHICAL INTERPRETATIONS 

IN MENTAL DEVELOPMENT. Same publishers. 
Fourth Edition, 1907. In French, German, Spanish, etc. 
Awarded Gold Medal Royal Acad, of Denmark. 

DICTIONARY OF PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHO- 
LOGY. 3 Vols, in 4 Parts. Edited (with an international 
corps of contributors) by J. Mark Baldwin, 1901-5. 
New York and London, Macmillan. 

STORY OF THE MIND. London, Hodder & Stoughton; 
New York, Appletons. For popular reading. In several 
languages. 

FRAGMENTS IN PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE. 
Collected Essays. London, Nimmo; New York, 
Scribners, 1902. 

THOUGHT AND THINGS, OR GENETIC LOGIC. 

Vol. I. Functional Logic, or Genetic Theory of 
Knowledge. 1906. London, Allen & Unwin ; New 
York, Macmillan. In French, German, and Spanish, 
Vol. II. Experimental Logic, or Genetic Theory 
OF Thought, 1908. Vol. III. Interest and Art. 
1911. 

THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY. Boston, Badger; 
London, Rebsam, 1910. French and Spanish trans. 

DARWIN AND THE HUMANITIES. Baltimore, 
Review Pub. Co., 1909; London, Allen & Unwin, 1910. 
French and Spanish trans. 

HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 2 vols., iUustrated. 
Loudon, Watts; New York, Putnam, 1913. 



GENETIC THEORY 

OF 

REALITY 



THE OUTCOME OF GENETIC LOGIC AS ISSUING IN 

THE ESTHETIC THEORY OF REALITY 

CALLED 

PANCALISM 

WITH AN EXTENDED GLOSSARY OF TERMS 



BY 



JAMES MARK BALDWIN 

Ph.D., Hon. D.Sc. (Oxford, Geneva), Hon. LL.D. (Glasgow) 
FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 

Zbc Iknicfierbocfter press 
1915 



Copyright, 1915 

BY 

JAMES MARK BALDWIN 









\ 

Ube IRmcherboclier ipress, IRew ]!?orf! 

FEB -4 1915 

©CI,A391580 



ALL THOSE WHO FIND IN 
ART 

the noblest instrument of the 
Spiritual Life 



rM 



PREFACE 

IN this book the matter appears which I had intended 
to place in the projected fourth volume of the 
work Thought and Things or Genetic Logic. ^ The 
change of plan has resulted from two considerations. 
The first and less important reason for it is that the 
London publishers of the latter work having gone into 
the hands of a "receiver," there promised to be delay 
and uncertainty as to the appearance of the new vol- 
ume.^ The more essential consideration, however, is 
that by making of this volume a separate work, I am 
able to include in it anthropological and historical mat- 
ter which I had promised to the present publishers some 
time before. In fulfilling that promise, I am there- 
fore completing the scheme of treatment of Genetic 
Logic, as announced in the Introduction to the first vol- 
ume of Thought and Things, and at the same time 
giving to the topic of Genetic Morphology (the last 
division of Genetic Logic) more extended treatment 
and wider scope. I find, in fact, of great interest the 

^ London, Geo. Allen & Co. (now Allen & Unwin) ; New York, 
Macmillan. vol. i., "Functional Logic," 1906; vol. ii., "Experimental 
Logic," 1908; vol. iii., "Interest and Art, Genetic Epistemology, " 
1911. 

' It is only just that I should add that the acknowledgments made 
to the English publishers, in the Preface to volume iii., were intended 
for Messrs. Swan, Sonnenschein & Co., whose business was taken over — 
with what success I have indicated above — by Messrs. Geo. Allen & Co. 

V 



vi Preface 

confirmations coming to the theory of Interpretation — 
as issuing from the analyses of the larger work — from 
the treatment of the racial and historical problems (in 
Part II. of the present text).^ 

The close relation subsisting between this volume 
and the others mentioned is also seen in the frequent 
allusions to the latter found in the present text. By 
means of such references many repetitions are 
avoided; and at the same time those detailed analy- 
ses are summarised upon which rest the conclu- 
sions of this work. This is also, of course, the 
excuse for such citations: they are the references 
necessarily made from one part of a literary whole to 
other parts. 

The main conclusion itself, the doctrine of Pancal- 
ism, is the author's matured contribution to the theory 
of reality — the philosophy to which his professional 
life of study, teaching, and writing has led him. It 
is now for the first time stated with sufficient fulness 
and with historical perspective. It was, however, 
thought out some time ago, and the principal point 
has had more or less definite statement in print on more 
than one occasion. Besides the exposition contained 
in vol. iii. of Thought and Things, chap. xv. (see also the 
Preface to the same volume, where the term Pancalism 
is first made use of) , brief statements are to be found in 
articles in the Psychological Bulletin, vol. iv., April 15, 
1907, and (especially) the Psychological Review , May, 
1903, and May, 1908; in Darwin and the Humanities, 
London ed., 1910, p. 93; and in the Preface to vol i. 
of Thought and Things, 1906, p. x, to which the motto 

' Confirmations briefly anticipated in part, in the Preface to volume 
iii., the final chapter of which also anticipates, in the form of a pro- 
gramme, the general theory of Pancalism now fully worked out. 



Preface vH 

xb xaXbv xav was affixed as an indication of the result 
to which the entire research had led the author. Fur- 
ther, apart from lectures delivered in Princeton and 
Baltimore'^ since about 1900, an early printed state- 
ment, which it is now relevant to recall, is that made in 
the Preface, p. ix, to the volume of collected essays 
entitled Fragments in Philosophy and Science (New 
York, Scribner's Sons, March, 1902). I venture to 
quote it here that it may be compared with the con- 
clusions of the present text. 

"The universe of science is, when all is said, a cos- 
mos which is not only true, but also beautiful, and in 
some sense good. Science tells us what is true; that is 
science's prerogative: and whatever may be science's 
final word about nature, that word is in so far the truth 
of the matter. Philosophy then enters her questions: 
How can such truth be also good, beautiful, livable? . . . 
While others say other things, and many others many 
other things, I say — using the liberty of this preface — 
It is good and true because it is beautiful. Nothing 
can be [finally] true without being beautiful, and nothing 
can be in any high sense good without being beautiful. 
In the words of my colleague and friend, Professor A. 
T. Ormond^ {Foundations of Knowledge, p. 228), 'the 
aesthetic principle is at the same time a demand and an 
intuition ... an ideal requirement and an intuition 
under which our world completes itself. ... It repre- 

* Citations from these unpublished lectures are made by Dr. (now 
President) W. D. Furry, in his monograph, The Esthetic Experience, its 
Nature and Function in Epistemology (Baltimore, 1908), a work in which 
the author, a member of my philosophical Seminary at Baltimore, 
carried the pancalistic point of view into the interpretation of certain 
epochs in the history of philosophy. 

^ This allusion to the views of Professor Ormond is now recalled and 
made more explicit on p. 215 below, and in Appendix B. 



VIU 



Preface 



sents the point in our conceptions where worth and 
truth coalesce and become one.' 

"The ascription of beauty, a reasoned, criticised, 
thought-out ascription of £esthetic quality, is the final 
form of our thought about nature, man, the world, the 
all." 

This profession of faith is now given its justification 
after a dozen years. ^ 

It has seemed to the writer that this volume might 
serve as a sort of Introduction to Philosophy, at least 
to those who conceive of philosophy not as in opposition 
to science but as inclusive of it. For the developments 
herein proceed upon conclusions drawn from psycho- 
logy, theory of evolution, logic, sociology, anthropology, 
ethics, aesthetics, and history and science of religion; 
and in each connection the summary given is made 
intelligible apart from actual resort to the detailed 
treatises on those subjects. The final conclusion is 
reached as one resting upon the sciences, but as one 
finding its place in the historical series of interpretations 
of nature and man to which we give the name philo- 
sophy. The historical sketch given in Part II. and 
the conclusions arrived at in Part III. show this. The 
method, also, while new in some of its applications, is 

^ The following explicit statement from the Psychological Review, 
May, 1904, p. 219, summarizes the pancalistic doctrine: "There is here 
[in the assthetic] a higher psychical immediacy in which all the dualisms 
of the mental life, at the stage reached, may on occasion merge in an 
immediate contemplative value of real presence; the dualisms of 
'theoretical and practical,' 'mind and body,' 'inner and outer,' 
'freedom and necessity,' all merge to the vanishing point in the 
sesthetic. " The article from which this citation is made gives a table 
which presents to the eye the main lines of development — the "pro- 
gressions" — of the mental life which were worked out later in detail in 
the work Thought and Things. 



Preface 



IX 



stated and defended in relation to other methods of 
philosophical procedure. The discussions of aesthetics 
and of the primitive and unlogical interpretations of 
the world may be found to bring something fresh into 
philosophical introductions in comparison with the 
many restatements of the problems of philosophy in 
logical form of which our literature is full. 

As adding an additional feature of utility to the 
volume in this direction, an extended Glossary is 
added presenting the definitions of terms new and old 
to which the genetic point of view has given a precise 
connotation. 

J. M. B. 

September, 1914. 



PAGE 



CONTENTS 

PART I 

INTRODUCTION: GENETIC INTERPRE- 
TATION 

CHAPTER I 
The Problem: Genetic Morphology 

§ I . The Question of Interpretation ... 3 

§2. The Historical Problem ..... 5 

§ 3. The Intrinsic Problem ..... 7 

§ 4. Scheme of Treatment ..... g 

CHAPTER II 

Individual Interpretation 

§ I . The Nature of Interpretation . . ,11 

§2. Interpretation as an Organisation of Interests . 13 

§ 3. Interpretation as the Social Organisation of 

Interests . . . . . . • i? 

§4. The Progression of Interpretation . . . 21 

§ 5. The Realities as Interpreted .... 25 

CHAPTER III 

The Paralellism between Individual and 
Racial Interpretation 

§ I . The Question of Racial Interpretation . . 32 



xii Contents 



PAGE 



2. Racial Interpretation as Organised Social 

Interest ....... 35 

3. The Stages of Interpretation ... 38 



PART II 
DEVELOPMENT OF INTERPRETATION 

CHAPTER IV 

Early Racial Interpretation: Its Pre- 
LOGiCAL Character. 

§ I. General Character of Early Racial Interpre- 
tation ....... 43 

§ 2. The Social Character of Early Racial Interpre- 
tation ....... 46 

§ 3. The a-Dualistic Character of Early Racial Inter- 
pretation ....... 53 

§ 4. The Relatively a-Logical Character of Early 

Racial Interpretation .... 64 

CHAPTER V 

Early Racial Interpretation: Its Positive 
Character 

§ I . The Social Organisation of Primitive Interest . 67 

§ 2. The Affective Nature of Primitive Generali- 
sation ....... 68 

§3. Imitation and Ejection in Primitive Thought . 72 

§ 4. Primitive Animism and Mysticism ... 74 

§5. The Rise of Mediate or Logical Interpretation . 83 



8 I 

§ 2 

§3 
§4 
§5 

§6 



8 I 

§2 

§3 
§4 

§5 

§6 

§7 



Contents xiii 

CHAPTER VI 
The Religious Interpretation 

PAGE 

The Religious Interest ..... 86 

The Religious Experience .... 87 

The Religious Object : its Personal Meaning . 92 

The Religious Object : its Ideal Meaning . . loi 

The Development of the Religious Meaning: 
its Logic ....... 107 

The Social Character of Religion . . . 109 

CHAPTER VII 
Religious Reality and Religious Negation 

The Religious Object as Existing . . .118 

The Union of Ideal and Actual in Religious 
Reality 122 

The Religious Antinomy .... 127 

Religious Negation: I. the Non-Religious or 
Secular ....... 129 

Religious Negation: 11. The Irreligious or 
Profane ....... 132 

Profane Reality: the Arch-Devil . . . 134 

The Philosophy of Religion: Religion as Organ 
of Value ....... 138 



CHAPTER VIII 
Logical Interpretation 

§ I . The Transition to Logic : the Role of Imagination 1 40 
§ 2. The Problem of Reflection . . , -145 

§3. Logical Theories : Scheme of Treatment . . 148 



xiv Contents 

CHAPTER IX 
Logical Interpretation: Mediation Theories 



PAGE 



§ I. Actuality Theories: Intellectualism . .152 

§ 2. Examination of Intellectualism' . . '155 

§3. Ideality Theories: Voluntarism . . , 165 

§ 4. Examination of Voluntarism . . . .167 

CHAPTER X 

Immediate Theories: i. Those Based on the 
Primitive and the Transcendent 

§ I. Their Basis: Immediacy .... 174 

§ 2. Theories Based on Primitive Immediacy (Primi- 
tive Mysticism, Subjectivism, Idealism) . 177 

§ 3. Theories based on the Immediacy of Comple- 
tion or Transcendence (Intuitionism, Dog- 
matic Spiritualism, Criticism, Absolutism) . 184 

§ 4. Results ....... 191 

CHAPTER XI 

Immediate Theories of Reality: ii. Those 
Based on the Immediacy of Synthesis 

§ I. The Immediacy of Synthesis . . .193 

§ 2. The Use of the Immediacy of Personality 

(Higher Mysticism, Super- Personal Theories) 194 

§ 3. The Synthesis of Feeling (Platonic Love, Con- 
structive Affectivism, Faith Philosophy) . 201 

§ 4. The Esthetic Synthesis (Aristotle, Kant, 

Schelling) . . , . . .205 



Contents xv 



CHAPTER XII 



Results of the Historical Survey: the 
Demand for an Intrinsic Synthesis 



PAGE 



§ I. The Presupposition of Truth and the Postu- 
late of Value . . . . . .216 

§ 2. The Fruitful Method, Genetic . . .220 



PART III 

ESTHETIC IMMEDIACY 

CHAPTER XIII 

The Intrinsic Synthesis, Esthetic 

§ I. The First Step : Imaginative Semblance . .231 

§ 2. The Esthetic Interest Synthetic in the Sense 

of Intrinsic or Autotelic .... 235 

§ 3. The Esthetic Object Synthetic in the Sense 

of a-Dualistic ...... 238 

§ 4. The ^Esthetic Ideal Synthetic in the Sense of 

Syntelic ....... 240 

§5. The .Esthetic Reality Inclusive and Privative . 244 

§ 6. The .Esthetic Reality a Synthesis of Universal 

and Singular . . . . . .249 

CHAPTER XIV 

The ^Esthetic Interpretation 

§ I. .Esthetic Realisation as Reconciliation of the 

Presupposition and the Postulate . . 256 

§ 2. ^Esthetic Realisation as Reconciliation of Actu- 
ality and Ideality ..... 259 



xvi Contents 



§ 3. Esthetic Realisation as Reconciliation of Free- 
dom and Necessity ..... 261 

§ 4. .Esthetic Realisation an Immediacy both of 

Reconciliation and of Fulfilment . . .266 

§ 5. Esthetic Intuition a Union of Theoretical and 

Practical — and More . . . . .269 

§ 6. ^Esthetic Reason and Absolute Beauty . .271 

PART IV 
CONCLUSIONS 



CHAPTER XV 

Pancalism: a Theory of Reality 

What Reality Must Mean .... 275 

Sorts of Relativity ..... 278 

The .Esthetic Content a Non-Relative Whole . 280 

The ijEsthetic, a Non-Relative Mode . . 283 

The .Esthetic, a Non-Relative Acceptance . 286 



§1 

§2 

§3 
§4 
§5 
§6 



The Esthetic Non- Relative as Respects the 
Relation of Knower and Known . . .291 



§ 7. The Knower and his Experience: Pancalism . 300 

CHAPTER XVI 

Corollaries 

§ I. The Nature of Reality ..... 303 

§2. The Only Alternative — Pluralism . . . 307 

§ 3. Pancalism, a Constructive Affectivism . . 308 





Contents 


xvii 

PAGE 


Glossary of Terms 


• 


• 313 


Appendix A . 


. 


. 323 


Appendix B . 


. 


• 323 


Appendix C . 


• 


. 325 


Index 


, . , . 


. 331 



GENETIC THEORY OF REALITY 



PART I: INTRODUCTION 
GENETIC INTERPRETATION 



CHAPTER I 

THE PROBLEM: GENETIC MORPHOLOGY 

§ I. The Question of Interpretation 

IN an earlier volume, ^ in which the programme of the 
entire discipline of Genetic Logic was outlined, the 
following sentence from Lotze was quoted as defining 
what we are now to consider as the problem of inter- 
pretation. 

I. "It is," says Lotze, ^ "the question how far the 
most complete structure of thought which all the 
means enable us to rear, can claim to be an adequate 
account of that which we seem compelled to assume as 
the object and occasion of our ideas. " This pronounce- 
ment is fully applicable to the topics which are now to 
come before us. Assuming the completed structiire of 
knowledge as genetically made out, "the complete 
structtire of thought ^ which all our means enable us to 

^ Thought and Things, vol. i., "Functional Logic," Introduction, sect. 
l6. The place of this problem in the whole scheme is spoken of both 
in the general Introduction as just cited, and also in the Introduction of 
volume iii. of that work, which presents the topic of Real Logic. In the 
volume last cited, entitled "Interest and Art," the problem of Genetic 
Epistemology is treated, while here the correlative problem of Genetic 
Morphology is taken up. See Appendix A. 

^ Lotze, Logic, Eng. trans., vol. i., p. 12. 

3 Rather, in our case, the complete structure of "experience," not 
merely that of thought, narrowly understood. 

3 



4 Genetic Interpretation 

rear, " the further question then is, how far this com- 
plete structure of thought or apprehension — pre-logical, 
logical, and hyper-logical — can claim to render ade- 
quately the reality which "we seem compelled to assume 
as the object and occasion of our ideas. " 

This question is sufficiently definite and not at all 
unfamiliar. It falls apart naturally into two: first, 
that of the "claim," to use Lotze's term, that thought 
or experience makes to render reality, the problem of 
Epistemology^; and second, that of the validity of the 
results — the success or failure, in this task, of the differ- 
ent motives and processes of experience. How are their 
respective results to be adjusted in the meaning of reality 
present in the assumptions of knowledge and life alike? 
This is the problem of Comparative Morphology, which 
follows upon that of Epistemology, both utilising the 
results of genetic research. Together they constitute 
"Real Logic. "^ 

2. This last is the problem of interpretation. We 
have, as Lotze intimates, the natural and ordinary 
assumptions, in life and experience, of what is super- 
ficially called "reality. " But we go on to reach, always 
and everywhere, ways of understanding, construing, 
thinking about, this reality; in some cases, from mere 
curiosity; in other cases, for purposes of practical 
utility. The savage who falls on his face in the presence 
of the eclipse, no less than the astronomer who turns 

^ Epistemology, taken in the broadest sense, as including all possible 
modes of apprehension, affective and conative as well as cognitive. 

^"It remains for Real Logic (i) to interpret each entire series of 
objective constructions in terms of the sort of reality which their 
cognition attributes to them; and (2) to interpret all of them together in 
the mode of reality in which their common cognition terminates, if there 
be such a comprehensive mode." — Thought and Things, vol. i., chap, i., 
sect. II. 



The Problem: Genetic Morphology 5 

his glass upon it, is "interpreting" reality. The action 
of each shows how he understands the event, what its 
meaning is to him. 

§ 2. The Historical Problem of Interpretation 

3. Our method, however, requires that the problem 
be stated in historical and genetic form. We are led 
to see that there are not only typical sorts of interpre- 
tation appearing as the outcome of typical stages and 
modes of mental process, but also that there are recog- 
nisable genetic reasons for their appearance when and 
where they do. A primitive man can not understand 
the world in terms of meanings of refined reflection, any 
more than a child can understand the explanations given 
in the text-books of physics and psychology. We may 
suppose, therefore, that these differences have them- 
selves genetic order and development, that there is a 
natural history of interpretation itself: a continuous 
movement in the adjustment of the motives of the 
apprehension of things, resulting in a progression in the 
evolution of world-views, with the evolution of human 
culture. If the individual's typical experience passes 
successively through a series of modes of apprehension — 
projective, religious, dualistic, logical, esthetic, — we 
should expect the history of culture to reveal a similar 
progress. Similar stages and points of view should be 
observed in the development of racial interpretation 
and reflection. 

This is a restatement, from a genetic and evolution- 
ary point of view, of the problem of "stages " of thought 
stated by August Comte, with a suggestion as to its 
solution. What have been the stages in the evolution 
of interpretation? And why — from what genetic mo- 



6 Genetic Interpretation 

tives — have they been what they have? If the develop- 
ment of the apprehension of self and things, in the in- 
dividual's case, is correctly made out, we may be able 
to trace out the correlative stages in the historical evo- 
lution of the race. The social products could not rise 
higher, at any period, than the individuals' knowledge 
and practice would justify — so much negatively. And 
the notable and typical gains of individuals, in mental 
and moral progress, would show themselves, in time and 
in serial order, in the texture of the social fabric; in its 
institutions and in its theoretical speculations — so much, 
at least, more positively.^ 

4. The consideration of the question of the history 
of interpretation falls to the genetic theory of reality 
and constitutes, in our plan, the first great branch of 
Morphology. Our consideration of it takes form parallel 
to that of the consideration of the meaning of reality to 
the individual^: the types of interpretation found in 

' In my History of Psychology: A Sketch and an Interpretation, this 
thought is carried out, the development of psychology being considered 
as the evolution of the dualism of mind and body and its interpreta- 
tion, parallel with a similar movement in the individual. That little 
work (London, Watts; New York, Putnam, 1913) was written and 
published in the interval between the appearance of vol. iii. of Thought 
and Things and the present volume. It develops intimations made in 
earlier publications and worked out in university lectures at Baltimore, 
1903-6. The same thought has been utilised in treating a special pro- 
blem in the monograph of Furry, Aesthetic Experience (Psychol. Review 
Philos. Monographs, No. i, 1908). 

^ The "Genetic Epistemology " of Thought and Things, vol. iii. 
Of the two more evident explanations of the parallelism or "concurrence " 
between the two movements, this seems the preferable, because it is 
more empirical and demonstrable. It suggests a de facto relation, the 
presence of influences by which the individual and social apprehensions 
have actually advanced together and in reciprocal relationship to each 
other. . . . The other (the "rational") explanation assumes a cer- 
tain constitution or "nature" of thought, which shows itself to be the 
same in the two cases. 



The Problem: Genetic Morphology 7 

the history of thought are, in genetic order, pre-logical, 
logical, and hyper-logical. This intimation may here 
suffice for the purpose of introduction to the detailed 
investigation itself (Part II., below). 

§ J. The Intrinsic Problem of Interpretation 

5. The problem of interpretation itself remains over, 
apart from the question of history. The consideration 
of its history is ancillary to its own treatment. We 
have, then, as the second and last great problem of 
Morphology — as it is the last also of Genetic Logic 
as a whole — that of the interpretation of the meaning 
of reality as legitimately issuing from the entire men- 
tal movement whose development has concerned us. 
Which, if any, of the historical interpretations is justi- 
fied in its results? — what does each motive contribute 
to the full meaning of the real? — what is the synthetic 
and reconciling mode of apprehension in which the 
movement of commerce with the real itself overcomes 
its own dualisms and oppositions, and attains a fully 
satisfying contemplation of that which, in the words 
of Lotze, is "the object and occasion of our 
ideas"? 

This is the intrinsic problem. Our treatment of it 
will be genetic in the sense already illustrated.^ Our 
aim is to follow the movement of mental process and 
not to dictate to it; to observe it, not to direct it. It 
is in this that the treatment of the topic as a branch of 

^ A recent able discussion of Genetic Morphology, taken in this sense, 
is that of W. M. Urban in the concluding chapter (xiv.) of his work, 
Valuation: Its Nature and Laws. As is indicated later on (chap, x,, 
sect. 19), this is the fundamental problem of the "critical" enquiry 
of Immanuel Kant, with the important diflference, however, that our 
method is genetic, not "critical" or logical. 



8 Genetic Interpretation 

genetic logic differs from the traditional, purely' logical 
and theoretical, discussions. These indeed belong, as 
we are to see, to a special period — the "logical" period 
— in the history of interpretation. 

But there are other motives entering into the 
full meaning of the real, beyond the discursive or 
logical, and it is equally our business to discover 
them. 

6. As has been said, the historical movement of 
interpretation shows the three great periods conveniently 
characterised as prelogical, logical, and hyper-logical; 
and these three headings will be our divisions in the 
treatment of the historical movement.^ But in the 
consideration of the comparative factors entering into 
the interpretation of the meaning of the real as such, we 
find that such a division — based on successive cross- 
sections, as it were, of the entire content of mental 
process — is not adequate. It indicates the character 
of the psychical process from which the interpretation 
issues and the general type of solution as dependent 
upon the mental function. But it does not penetrate 
of itself into the solution and discover the motive at 
work by which the type of reality is determined. At the 
same time, by its distinction of modes of process — as 
being prelogical, logical, and so forth — it gives us hints 
by means of which we may utilise the results reached in 
the examination of the processes themselves. 

Such, indeed, has already been our resource: we have 
found, in the discussion of Epistemology already 
referred to, that the meanings of the real persistently 
fell into two great classes. On the one hand, both the 
demands of action issuing from the motives of the 

'Except that instead of "hyper-logical" we speak of "immediacy" 
theories, a term more significant for classification as explained below. 



The Problem: Genetic Morphology 9 

practical life, and those of knowledge proper issuing 
from the motives of the intellectual life, proceed, 
always and everywhere, by a process of mediation hy 
and through representative states of mind or ideas. On 
the other hand, the interests of immediacy, of direct 
apprehension and contemplation, are present in char- 
acteristic forms in the lowest and the highest reaches of 
conscious process, in the primitive and in the hyper- 
logical. All reality, therefore, whatever the process of 
reaching it may be, is either immediate or mediate, 
either immediately given or mediated by ideas. If this 
be true, our problem is greatly simplified. We have 
to ask, not whether this or that stage of development 
gives the final interpretation of reality ; but which type 
of " real " meaning, the mediate or the immediate, is 
the more comprehensive and satisfying. 

In this part of our work therefore (Part III) we will 
examine interpretations based respectively on Medi- 
ation and Immediacy, taking account of the several 
types of each revealed in the historical accoimt of the 
stages of interpretation (Part II) and reaching our own 
reasoned results. 

In the last Part (IV) it will remain to gather 
up certain Conclusions and Corollaries of a philo- 
sophical sort, which illustrate the wider bearings of 
Pancalisra.* 

§ 4. Scheme of Treatment 

In view of the foregoing, we arrive at the following 
scheme of treatment : 

I Certain Appendices follow, of which the first (Appendix A) may be 
especially referred to here, as well as a " Glossary" of the terms used 
in this and other genetic treatises. On the term " Pancalism," see the 
remarks in the Preface. 



10 Genetic Interpretation 



TABLE I 

Genetic Morphology: the Problem of Interpretation. 
Part I. Introduction. 

Part II. Historical: the Development of Interpre- 
tation. 

i. Early Racial (pre-logical and 

religious) Interpretation. 
ii. Logical Interpretation: theories 

based on Mediation. 
iii. Hyper- logical Interpretation : 
theories based on the Im- 
mediate. 
Part III. The theory of Esthetic Immediacy: Pan- 

calism. 
Part IV. Conclusions and Corollaries. 



CHAPTER II 

INDIVIDUAL INTERPRETATION 

§ I. The Nature of Interpretation 

I. It will become plain as we proceed that what 
we are calling Interpretation — following the usage 
already suggested^ — is generally covered by the term 
"meaning." The best way to introduce the topic, 
indeed, is to recall briefly the theory of meaning as it 
has been worked out in recent discussions, and take 
advantage of what we know about it. 

In general, interpretation is simply the entire mean- 
ing given to an experience, fact, event, by the conscious- 
ness which, as we say, "makes" the interpretation. 
Given bare happenings — a flash of light, a rumbling 
sound, a shaking movement — each item means this 
or that experience: a thunder-storm, a passing cart, 
an unsteady chair. Whatever intent of added meaning 
attaches to the bare content of fact or idea, it is in so 
far a personal interpretation of the fact or idea. It 
may be little or much, superficial or profoimd. Infor- 

^ This chapter sets together, under the heading of Interpretation, 
the results of earKer detailed discussions, so far as they are comparable 
with those of racial thought as brought out below (Part II.). It aids 
us also in the task of focussing our thought in the final interpretation 
to which we ourselves arrive (Parts III and IV). See also Thought and 
Things, vol. i., and HoCfding's La Pensee humaine. 

II 



12 Genetic Interpretation 

mation, purpose, utility, association, habit, appetite, 
instinct — a dozen motives of meaning — may surge up 
and segregate themselves about the nucleus of the given 
datum. All the experiences cited as examples above, 
sensations of sight, hearing, muscular sense, may be 
united together in the interpretation made by the Sicil- 
ian, who cries "earthquake," and rushes from his 
dwelling in terror. And a similar interpretation may be 
arrived at by the scientific man seated at Washington, 
who has before him simply the tracing of a needle on 
carbon paper, hearing, seeing, and feeling nothing of the 
physical event itself. His interpretation is more remote, 
more indirect and logical, as we say, but it expresses, 
just as the Italian peasant's does, the meaning he attaches 
to the datum that comes before his mind. 

2. Avoiding debated questions, of the nature of the 
datum, the relation of content and intent, of presenta- 
tion and interest — all questions elsewhere sufficiently 
discussed^ — we may here simply point out that the 
interpretation, considered as attaching to the thing 
interpreted, is of the nature of "intent," over against 
content. It has the variability and personal quality — 
as being relatively mystical or logical or aesthetic — 
given it by the individual's mode of apprehension and 
feeling. As meaning, it is selective. Over against 
this, there is the relative constancy and recognitive 
character of the content, the common and neutral thing 
or event that is interpreted. The sound, the light, the 
movements of the earth, are heard, seen, felt, in about 
the same way by all normal persons; they constitute 
the same "content." But the interpretations of one 
or more of these events differ seriously. The actual 
event may give rise to all sorts of conjectures and 

" See "Functional Logic," vol. i. of Thought and Things. 



Individual Interpretation 13 

suppositions, each in its way a tentative "intent" of 
interpretation. 

3. In the tangled wilderness of these differences, 
however, it will pay us to attempt to discover pathways 
— lines of classification and distinction in the motives 
and in the results. And it appears that we have at 
hand means of doing so. The general distinction 
between two great factors of knowledge, the datum 
and the interest, should be recalled; and the question 
asked as to the relative place and role of each of these 
in this or that case of interpretation. On the one hand, 
the datum goes on to develop into the objective reality 
which controls the manifestations of interest and action ; 
on the other hand, the interest gives personal and selec- 
tive meaning to the objective system of data. Let us 
consider the nature of interpretation somewhat more 
fully from this point of view. 

§ 2. Interpretation as an Organisation of Interests 

4. The interest which the individual brings to any 
objective experience is as varied as are the motives of 
action and knowledge. As has often been pointed out, 
the simplest "thing" — the sapling, say, at the road- 
side — ^may be rendered in a variety of ways, which 
testify to the dominant habit or to the casual interest 
of the observer. The modest tree means the refuge or 
shelter, the source of fire- wood for the home, the speci- 
men of horticulture, the value for exploitation, the 
species of botanical science, the object of aesthetic 
pleasure, the symbol of religious truth. All these are 
legitimate and synchronous interpretations of what is, 
in the experience itself, a certain controlling set of 
conditions — controlling upon the senses, upon direct 



14 Genetic Interpretation 

observation, and upon social acceptance. We say 
to one another, "See that tree!" — and with the reply- 
comes the possibility of reporting and confirming in 
common the basis upon which the different interpreta- 
tions all depend. These interpretations, however, may 
run away with the datum, so to speak, piling upon it a 
mass of selective and personal interest, which obscures 
and distorts it. Indeed the great motive and the pro- 
longed struggle of the cognitive interest, as such, the 
interest in neutral and objective truth, is just to dis- 
entangle the bare object from the meshes of preferential 
interest and interpretation, and preserve intact its system 
of commonly observable relationships. 

While we may say that from the first the individual's 
principal types of interest are germinating and are 
already more or less organised in the ready mechanism 
of appetite and instinct, still it is evident that there is a 
genetic progression in the life of interest. In the stretch 
of mental development, up to the dawn of the explicitly 
logical, it is not the cognitive interest that is pre- 
dominant and directive. On the contrary, the exigencies 
of practical life — indeed those of physical existence itself 
— are controlling upon the apprehension and interpreta- 
tion of things in the world. All things that serve to 
pick up milk are "spoons " to the child, and any one who 
sings to him in the dark is "mama." The lines of 
cleavage are not drawn by the hand of sensation, but 
by the hand of interest, practical and emotional. 

5. The emotional, as such, takes on great importance 
with the development of the child's natural affections. 
Attachments of a quasi-instinctive sort dominate 
situations in which many alternatives are otherwise 
possible: the great social motives of family, clan, and 
race. We have examined in detail, in our discussion of 



Individual Interpretation 15 

"affective logic, "^ the principles under the rule of which 
the great emotional preferences and interests are organ- 
ised in relative independence of the organisation of the 
motives of knowledge, though not in actual separation 
from them. The distinctively practical or utilitarian 
motives, subconsciously at work, are supplemented by 
those of emotion and affection, both tending in their 
outcome to silence or render inarticulate the voice of 
cognition as such. 

6. The more special and seemingly exclusive organi- 
sations of interest should not blind uSj however, to the 
presence of other and less exclusive ones, proceeding 
along with them and perhaps using the same objective 
data. The child who does not seem to distinguish the 
real spoon from the hollow building block, for the pur- 
pose of eating, does not think of using the spoon as a 
building block. He perceives, then, clearly enough, the 
actual difference of form. In spite of the varying larger 
interests which in turn obscure the simple shape or form, 
this latter is nevertheless on occasion properly isolated. 
The boy who does not, because he need not, distinguish 
between his mother's and father's voices when he is 
called to dinner, does make the distinction very promptly 
when one or the other summons him to get up in the 
morning! So, as we will have occasion to see later on, 
the savage who seems to have no adequate perception of 
the mere club or feather as such, merging the sense-data in 
a larger mystic interpretation of their meaning, still uses 
the weapon or the ornament on occasion under another 
interest, in a way which reveals an accurate apprehension 
of its form, size, colour, and physical properties. ^ 

' In Part III. of " Interest and Art " (vol. iii. of Thought and Things). 

' This is a very significant fact in connection with the interpretation 
of savage modes of thought; see below, chap. 4, §3, sect. 19. 



1 6 Genetic Interpretation 

There is, then, in the working of the mind as a whole, 
even in the early stages of apprehension, a great variety 
of possible organisations of interest and data. In one 
case one dominant interest comes to the fore, in another, 
another. The proper and accurate cognition of things 
of sense may coexist with the organisation of interest 
led by instinct or by association of sense with sense; 
and with both of these there may exist larger practical 
and emotional complexes. On occasion, as an inde- 
pendent issue or as means to a further end, the datum, 
the bed-rock of perception, which, as a body of ob- 
jectively stable and unyielding objects, is the control 
upon action, comes sharply into its own. Generally, 
however, it serves only as a condition, a sign, a trigger, 
a signal for the outpouring of the mass of affective pro- 
cesses and of social habits, which overflow and conceal 
it. It is only in the stage of logical process, dominated 
by judgment, that the cognitive motive and inter- 
est, as such, become in any sense independent and 
autonomous. 

7. The important thing to note in this connection is 
that the mental life is often given over to types of 
interpretation in which affective and active factors 
play the predominant r61e. The factor of cognitive ap- 
prehension, as such, is present in interpretations of this 
type, but it does not, in the prelogical stages of develop- 
ment, assume independent form and become itself a 
predominant interest. The term "prelogical" means 
pre-discursive, pre-theoretical, pre-scientific ; it does 
not mean pre-noetic, nor in principle anti-logical. The 
motives of knowledge are present, but it is not mainly 
in their interest that the mental life is organised and 
objective data interpreted. It is the subjective factor, 
not the objective factor; the interest, not the datum; 



Individual Interpretation 17 

the value, not the truth, that actuates the movement 
of the mind. 

This receives further on a remarkable emphasis in 
our consideration of the social interpretation to which 
the data of early knowledge submit. 

§ J. Interpretation as the social Organisation of Interests 

8. The inestimable debt that individual knowledge 
owes to society has recently been pointed out. In our 
detailed examination of the "common" force of know- 
ledge,^ at its different stages, we have come upon 
abundant evidence that it is by social or "secondary" 
conversion processes that individual results are con- 
firmed and corrected. Thus the vagaries of personal 
preference and private idiosyncrasy are discovered and 
discounted. The individual submits to the common 
and social verdict, and by it learns to think true. 

It has not been made plain,, however, that the op- 
posite may be sometimes the outcome: the individual 
may be the victim of social errors, of current vagaries. 
The assumption that the individual's results are 
corrected and made reliable by social tests rests upon 
the further assumption that the social results by which 
they are tested are themselves correct and reliable. 
But what guarantee has society that its results are 
reliable but the resort in turn to the experience and 
judgment of individuals?^ The best that society can 
do for the individual is to bring him into agreement 

' See Thought and Things, vol. i., chap. vii. (in general) vol. ii., 
chap. lii. (common force of judgment); vol. iii., chap, vii., (common 
force of practical rules). 

' The writer has dwelt upon this revision of society's truths by individ- 
ual tests in the work Development and Evolution, chap. xvii. See the 
diagram given in Thought and Things, vol. ii., chap, vi., sect. 27. 



1 8 Genetic Interpretation 

with itself; but the result may be right and it may be 
wrong. 

9. The individual becomes aware of this bondage to 
the social when he learns to judge for himself and to 
have resort to personal and direct experience of nature 
and man — when, that is, he resorts to "primary" 
instead of to "secondary" conversion tests. Valuable 
as the social training is in matters of practical life, and 
in all knowledge that represents accumulated experi- 
ence and is ready to submit itself, or has done so, to 
the immediate tests of trial and criticism; beyond this 
point it becomes a "blind leader of the blind." As 
matter of fact, the individual spends much of his period 
of competent reflection and private judgment in cor- 
recting the errors of belief and practice into which his 
submissive social training has led him,'' 

The result is that the entire body of socially accepted 
and socially enforced "truths" are subject to gradual 
revision and correction by the thought, invention, and 
discovery of individuals. The more inventive thinkers 
insist upon bringing to the test the established and 
conventional formulations in which they have been 
reared. The social view is found to have arisen by pro- 

' As knowledge becomes mature it passes through the period of 
enforced commonness, the result of which is merely "aggregate" (in the 
terms of the discussions referred to), on to the period at which the value of 
agreement and common conformity becomes apparent to the individual 
and he consciously imitates the current models. His thought is then 
"syndoxic." Both these periods represent the social apprenticeship of 
thought. But when judgment arises, the tables are turned. The 
individual serves notice upon other thinkers to agree with him. His 
judgment recognises its kinship to the judgment of the social fellows, 
as reaching the same conclusions. Let us all cease imitating one an- 
other, says he, cease accepting anyone's "say-so"; let us resort in 
common to the source of all sure information, the facts as they are. 
Judgment, in this sense, is "synnomic." So also are the rules of 
practice issuing from moral judgment, and for analogous reasons. 



Individual Interpretation 19 

cesses of prelogical apprehension, mystic participation, 
and imitative propagation rather than by the tried and 
tested methods of actual experience and experiment. 

Thus society is carried out of the pre-logical into the 
logical stage of thought, through the personal compe- 
tence and insistence of individuals. Society is the 
disciplinary agent, the schoolmaster, to the individual's 
thought ; but the pupil outgrows the social school. He 
learns that he and the society alike, of which he is a 
part, have to submit to the tests of another and imper- 
sonal system of controls: those of nature, given in 
perception; and those of logical consistency, given in 
the body of reasonable thinking. 

10. In the prelogical stages of knowledge, interpreta- 
tion shows the lack of logical coherence and organisation. 
The immaturity of thought shows itself in respect to 
each of the criteria of the logical mode as such. The 
self of clear self-consciousness being undeveloped, there 
is the blending of the individual's personal interests and 
actions with those of the social group; a mutual 
interpenetration of selves, as social habit and common 
interest require. The self of family, clan, tribe, repre- 
senting a solidarity of interests within the circle, forbids 
the assertion of individual desire, will, or caprice. All 
is ruled in the interests of the group. It is only grad- 
ually that the youth, even in civilised society, learns 
the lessons of individualism and sturdy self-assertion. 

In the matter of the interpretation of external things 
also, the immaturity of judgment shows itself, through 
the acceptance of the social decree in place of the testing 
by fact. As long as the dualism of idea and thing, of 
the subjective and objective, is not clear, the interpreta- 
tion of the external may allow all sorts of interpenetra- 
tion of things and selves. Things may act as selves do, 



20 Genetic Interpretation 

the caprice of persons may attach to things, the mystery 
of the explosive and uncaused actions of persons may 
extend to all the world. This leads to a mystical and 
emotional interpretation — "fearful," in the religious 
sense — of the commonest objects of the external world. "" 
II. With these things go the characters of pre- 
logical knowledge which put in evidence the absence of 
the faculty of judgment. It is by judgment, together 
with its rules of consistency, contradiction, sufficient 
reason, and so forth, that the system of logical truth 
is built up. In the pre-logical modes these rules and 
restraints are not present;^ the motives of suggestion, 
imitation, emotional contagion, personal imagination, 
social impulsion, religious fear, work out their proper 
results. Illogical and unlogical things pass muster; 
the child, like the savage, accepts the wildest tales of 
fancy, the most impossible violations of time, place, and 
cause, without flinching in his acceptance or revolting 
in his emulation. The stories told children of religious 
miracles and feats of national prowess, pass through 
their minds with the simple vise of teacher, story-book, 
or well-informed friend. Why not? The children are 
organising their interests, making their interpretations, 

' We have seen in some detail (in Thought and Things, vol. i. , chap, 
v., sect. 12, 24) that the confusion is exemplified in the case of the appre- 
hension of his own body by the individual person. The body is a centre 
of mystery. It embodies both sorts of reality at once: it is both a 
person and a thing, the locus of physical change and the fulcrum of 
personal effort. If this physical body can be the seat of pain and effort, 
and the theatre of all the personal dramas of dreams and reveries, why 
may not other bodies also? The personal body is the centre of many of 
the most remarkable rites and mysteries of primitive belief and usage. 

= We have seen, in our detailed investigation of emotional organisa- 
tion, that affective logic lacks the principles of "contradiction" and 
"excluded middle." See Thought and Things, vol. iii., "Interest and 
Art," chap. vii. 



Individual Interpretation 21 

as best they can; their properly cognitive and logical 
apprehensions are not controlled apart from their 
affective and active impulses and dispositions. The 
latter, the un-logical, are more urgent, through the 
constraint of the social life, which puts no premium 
upon individual thought — just the contrary. The 
result is that the interpretations of the individual, like 
those of the group, are dominated by the emotional and 
uncritical acceptance to which the term "mysticism" 
is generally applied. 

§ 4. The Progression of Interpretation 

12. Thus understood, interpretation is nothing more 
nor less than the process of reaching objective meaning. 
It passes through the genetic periods designated pre- 
logical, logical, and hyper-logical. In the detailed 
treatment of these stages, movements of a semi-logical 
or quasi-logical sort have been found, bridging the 
gap between the prelogical and the logical; and also, 
similarly, processes of a vanishing logical or over- 
discursive sort, leading from the explicitly logical to the 
higher intuitive and contemplative. The entire series, 
for our present purposes, is as follows: perceptive, 
intuitive, semi-discursive, discursive (logical), over- 
discursive, contemplative (intuitive). 

Considering this series, in a broad way and from the 
point of view of function, we note certain interesting 
things. The apprehension moves from one intuitive 
pole, the intuition of direct apprehension, to another, 
the intuition of contemplation. Between these lies the 
vast tract of discursive or logical process, in which the 
directness of intuition gives place to the mediating 
processes of thought. The acceptance of sense-per- 



22 Genetic Interpretation 

ception and feeling yields to the mediated belief of 
judgment and reflection; and these in their turn find 
their supplement and completion in the acceptance of 
rational intuition and aesthetic contemplation. Through 
thought there is a freeing of the mind from the inade- 
quacies and inaccuracies of first-hand and uncritical 
acceptance ; processes of personal judgment and logical 
grounding succeed the ready formulas and conventions 
of reality-feeling and social convention. But this is not 
all; there is a second freeing. Motives of an intimate 
nature — the "private" values, ideals, and ends — to- 
gether with the "singular" values of emotion and interest, 
survive and claim more adequate place than that given 
them in the indirect and discursive reports of thought. 
Accordingly, the elan, the effort of the mental movement, 
is toward a higher immediacy, in which the gains 
reached by discursive process are integrated in the new 
directness and immediacy of contemplation. This is 
the second freeing of the mind : the freeing of the facul- 
ties of knowledge and value alike from the trammels of 
thought, from the machinery of mediation. 

These two "freeings" occur at the transition periods 
spoken of above. It is worth while to consider them 
more closely in view of their importance both in the 
individual and in the corresponding racial movement of 
interpretation. They also figure in the final conclu- 
sions to which we. come in the last part of our work. 

13. The first of these transitions, called just above 
that of a "freeing through thought," has the semi- 
logical characters which show the essential motives to 
all mediation, cognitive and active alike. It comes by 
a flowering, an expansion, of the imagination. Images 
are utilised as the medium of truths and ends; they 
are set up, played with, schematised, manipulated. 



Individual Interpretation 23 

The imagination projects, postulates, conjectures, 
makes experiments, all by means of images. "As-if " 
constructions, semblant in character, have their turn; 
make-believe runs ahead of belief; playful treatment 
of results poses as experimental confirmation ; fairy-tales 
serve as introduction to the wonderland of reality. 
The individual has his fancies, and the race has its 
myths — both handmaids to thought. 

In two ways does this flowering of the imagination 
serve to form the motives of thought. It acts by an 
assumption of reality, which foreruns the grounding of 
fact, and is instrumental to belief. It is the midway 
point between the immediacy of direct presence found 
in sensation and perception, and the full immediacy 
of the conclusion confirmed by actual testing and by the 
reducing processes of logic. And it is also freeing in 
the sense that it clarifies the inner realm in which images 
of all kinds disport themselves. It thus prepares the 
way for the explicit dualism between the self and the 
objects of its thought. Both of these results have been 
brought out in detail in our discussions of individual 
development; they are both plainly to be found oper- 
ative also in the racial movement of interpretation, as 
will be shown below. 

14. The second of the periods of transition, spoken 
of above as being also a "freeing," is worthy of attention. 
It shows the transition from the logical or discursive, 
as such, to the hyper-logical, higher intuitive, and 
contemplative. It is a freeing from thought, as the 
other is a freeing of thought. The use of cognitive 
schemes and logical concepts, of ideas and conceptual 
categories, belongs to the method of thought; it is its 
resource to such an extent that consciousness becom.es 
accustomed to exercise its acceptances and rejections 



24 Genetic Interpretation 

on grounds of reasonableness alone. The result is that 
a disparity arises between the world of immediate 
experience, given in feeling and action, intuition and 
presentation, on the one hand, and that of mediate or 
grounded results, on the other hand, whether they be 
in the realm of truth or value. Thought is limited in 
its rendering of experience ; the singular and the immedi- 
ate escape its net. The reintegration of these with the 
results of thought in the whole of experience become 
then the task — and to us the problem — of interpretation. 

15. This task is accomplished, in the natural move- 
ment of consciousness, by another and very remarkable 
exercise of the imagination. It is by the imagination, 
as has been said above, that the mediation of thought is 
first ushered in. So it is by the imagination, also, that 
the limitations and restrictions of thought are overcome. 
In the former case, the forecasts of the imagination pass 
into the confirmed and controlled results of mediation. 
In the latter, on the contrary, the imaginative scheme, 
the semblant forecast, maintains itself, as over against 
the claims of both types of mediation. The self refuses 
to retire into the sphere of subjectivity, over against the 
objective and external. On the contrary, it reads its 
presence into the experience which is already enriched 
by the accretions of mediate process, claiming to secure, 
by direct contemplation or intuition, the full realisation 
of the subjective meaning. 

In the individual, this freeing of experience from the 
restrictions and limitations of thought, brings a new equi- 
librium to the whole m_ental life. It negates the exclu- 
sive claims of rational and voluntaristic process alike, and 
restores to the immediacy of feeling its dignity and value. ^ 

' Upon these hints, contained in the spontaneous process itself, the 
interpretation of reality given below, in Parts III. and IV., is based. 



Individual Interpretation 25 

We find below, in the sketch of the history of philo- 
sophical interpretation, that the extreme logical or ra- 
tionalistic solutions of the problem of reality have been 
accompanied or followed by movements toward the 
recognition of immediacy, in various degrees mystical 
and aesthetic in its character, ^ As the earliest dualistic 
forms of theory were ushered in by departures from the 
immediate acceptance of things as they are, criticism 
succeeding realism and reason coming after super- 
stition; so in turn these latter reveal motives of more 
refined dualism, the terms of which can be reconciled 
only in a new synthetic and aesthetic unity. 

Here, however, our purpose is to recall the fact that 
in individual experience this is the case : in the aesthetic 
experience, the motive of essential reconciliation is to 
be found. It is not achieved by the undoing of the 
work of mediation; but, on the contrary, by the integra- 
tion of its results in the larger and richer unity of 
immediate contemplation. 

§5. The Realities as Interpreted 

16. We have now thrown into relief the outline of 
the movement of the interest which is active in inter- 
pretation^; it remains to recall briefly the stages reached 
in the development of the other great factor, the objec- 
tive datum. 

First of all, it is to be recalled that experience does 
not at the start isolate and distinguish the two sorts 
of reality represented by the dualism of subject and 
object, of minds and things. On the contrary, experi- 

^ This has been shown in detail by Furry, Esthetic Experience: its 
Nature and Function in Epistemology, Part II. 

' The details are given in the work mentioned, Thought and Things. 



26 Genetic Interpretation 

ence is merely "projective" — a projection before the 
gaze of the mind of a confused mass of striking happen- 
ings. Gradually out of this all the dualisms of later 
meaning emerge. The reality of a presentation at this 
stage is simply an aspect of the presentation itself. It 
has been called "reality-feeling," in contrast with the 
belief proper to the later period, when judgments of 
truth and existence are possible. In the terms of recent 
discussions of the subject, reality is simply "presumed" ; 
it is not judged nor is it even assumed; for there is no 
thought of reality as in any sense attached to or separate 
from the presentation in question. The presence of 
the content is all its reality means; its apprehension 
carries with it the presumption of those elements of 
persistence and stability which go on to develop into 
positive control. Existence and reality are later mean- 
ings, developed from this primitive presumption. 

Such is the reality of the datum in the prelogical 
period of knowledge. It is a meaning of imm.ediate 
presence and intuition. 

17. In the ensuing period, the motives of dualism 
and discursive process lead rapidly on to the log- 
ical mode; and a similar transition takes place in the 
meaning of reality, considered as datum of existence 
and control. The imagination takes the lead, as we 
have seen, projecting its schematic and tentative read- 
ings forward with various shadings of semblance and 
probability. To it, of course, the meaning of being 
real is not a mere presumption, since its force varies for 
different cases, and since it works out varying results 
under the tests of fact and truth. But before this 
testing, it is not the settled conviction of grounded 
belief; it has the character of assumption, proposal, 
hypothesis. The interpretations put forward by the 



Individual Interpretation 27 

imagination are assumed to hold, in the pursuit of the 
interest by which the process is motived. Reality is 
embodied in all sorts of "as-if " constructions, from the 
make-believe of play, together with the pretence of 
social mensonge, to the sober hesitation of doubt and 
the capricious will-to-believe of passion. The entire 
period in which the dualisms of self and other, of mind 
and body, of substantial existences, of subject and 
object — the period of the freeing of the motive of 
judgment from the bonds of social convention and 
authority — is shot through with the varied assumptions 
of possible existence and activity. All its interpreta- 
tions have the force of possibility and probability, which 
discounts in advance the realities of judgment and 
proof. 

18. The logical type of reality appears when experi- 
mentation in its many forms serves to establish or to 
annul the true or false assumptions of the imagination ; 
when the period of logical process proper — judgment, 
reasoning, implication — is ushered in. The germinal 
distinctions of control are hardened into the categories 
of existence and reality. The two substances, mind and 
body, are set up over against each other; the self 
retires into the citadel of subjectivity, distinct from all 
its thoughts ; the ego-self becomes, both in thought and 
in action, the reflective and self-assertive individual. 
The judgment, with its synnomic force, holding all to 
the results of each, succeeds to the uncritical presump- 
tion of social custom and habit, and to the schematic 
assumption of the imagination. As on the functional 
side, there is a releasing of the faculty of thought, so on 
the side of content or reality, there is a crystallising of 
the meaning of existence in the categories into which 
thought casts its objects. Thought, logical process, 



28 Genetic Interpretation 

in short, comes in to settle the questions of possibility 
and probability of the semblant imagination and to 
decide what is to be accepted as real. 

Thought settles these questions by means of the two 
great processes of mediation to which it is always com- 
mitted. By the logical mediation of ideas, it reaches 
conclusions that are true; and by the teleological 
mediation of means, it reaches ends that are valuable. 
The question "what?" is answered by the one, the 
question "what for?" by the other. 

In this mode, therefore, all objects or things have 
definite predicates of existence and value; they are 
what they can be proved to be, in both respects. They 
are also involved in a system of implications — causal, 
temporal, spacial, and so forth — which serves the 
unifying and relating interests of thought. The reality 
of each sort of existence becomes the presupposition 
of the object's acceptance; belief with the presupposi- 
tions of reality succeeds to the acceptance with pre- 
sumption and also to the semblance with assumption 
of the earlier modes. 

19. The logical, however, does not appear to be the 
last word. Consciousness achieves a freeing from logic 
as before she worked to secure the freeing of logic. 
The dualism of substances, that of self and thing, that 
of subject and object, all bring with them various 
embarrassments. The categories of thought, by their 
very nature, ignore and disparage certain of the most 
direct and pungent experiences of reality and of life. 
The ideal of the process of thought is one of mediation, 
as that of volition is; both are ideals of certitude and 
actuality: but just in those singular and concrete 
experiences in which directness and certitude are at 
their highest, the general categories of thought and the 



Individual Interpretation 29 

universal readings of logic are formal and inadequate. 
In them reality is not exhausted. 

20. The movement of apprehension then sweeps 
over and beyond cognitive process and reaches a new 
immediacy. It embodies itself in a new apergu of 
reality. The process of discursive thought, on the 
one hand, erects its principles into intuitive truths, 
absolute data of reason, from which the indirectness, 
remoteness, and discursive quality of thinking have 
disappeared. The presupposition of logical implication 
becomes the postulate of pure reason; and reality 
discloses to rational intuition its intimate nature. 
Thus the intuition of the real takes on rational form. 

On the other hand, the mediation of the active life 
pursues a similar ideal; it, too, seeks to secure absolute 
and final validity for its injunctions of moral conformity. 
Its ideal is attained also by a new immediacy and 
directness, an intuition of the rules of practice; but it 
is attained by a procedure the reverse — as we have 
shown in detail ^ — of that of the theoretical reason. It 
erects into postulates its ends, values, and goods; and 
drops out the instrumental means by which these goods 
are secured. Conditional and relative ends become 
absolute values, seeming to be imposed by the very 
nature of things, and to disclose the essence of the real 
as a system of practical goods. 

21. In this twofold way, then, the interpretation of 
the real takes on a new phase : it passes from the sphere 
of discursive thought into that of over-discursive intui- 
tive apprehension. But in each of these two ways of 
doing so, the rational and the practical, only a partial 
ideal is realised, since they are in strong contrast to each 

' See Thought and Things, vol. iii,, "Interest and Art," chap, viii., 
sect. 18 ff. 



30 Genetic Interpretation 

other. In one, the ideal is one of rational implication; 
in the other, one of practical conformity. Each is in so 
far absolute for its own process and content, but inap- 
plicable to the process and content of the other. The 
result is, as we are to see fully later on, a deep-seated 
and unconquerable opposition in the development of 
the philosophical systems into which interpretation 
takes on reflective form. Just as, in the individual, 
mere reasonable appearance does not suggest nor enforce 
the practical imperative; so in theory the ideal of 
rational system, embodied in a given set of theoretical 
categories, does not suggest nor impose the ideal good 
of the life of desire and will. Rationalism, based on the 
intuition of "pure reason," finds its rival in Voluntarism, 
based on that of "practical reason." Interpretation 
taking dual form in reason and conscience, does not 
resolve the dualism of truth and value even at the stage 
of intuition. 

22. It remains for the imagination to come to the 
rescue again here, as at the earlier stage when cognition 
was choked by its own mechanism. It secures a re- 
statement of both the ideals of mediate process, merg- 
ing them as moments in a larger mode of immediacy — 
that of aesthetic contemplation. As on the functional 
side, the process, freed from the narrow compulsion of 
argument, returns to an immediacy of direct apprehen- 
sion, so the interpretation takes up the data of know- 
ledge, together with those of value, in a larger whole of 
direct realisation. 

The meaning of the real as revealed by aesthetic 
insight is to be fully enquired into below. Here it is 
only in place to signalise its comprehensiveness, as 
issuing in a reality of reconciliation and completeness. 
The real of contemplation does not lack any of the data 



Individual Interpretation 31 

upon which the ideals of truth or value are erected; it 
lacks neither the generality of cognition, nor the singu- 
larity of sentiment, neither the objectivity nor the 
intimacy of the poles of self-feeling: all these are in- 
cluded in it. The interpretation which issues from it, 
therefore, in the history of thought should be genuinely 
synthetic, not merely eclectic — although it is often 
counterfeited by eclecticism at the higher stage, as it 
is by mysticism at the lower. It should be borne in 
mind that the progression to the esthetic is a movement 
of real change in the motivation of knowledge; and 
that only by showing a similarly genuine necessity of 
synthesis can the corresponding interpretation be 
justified on the part of reflection. The movement of 
consciousness is one of higher semblance, in which the 
motives of control are brought to a new equilibrium; 
it is in the lesson of this that the aesthetic interpretation 
must find its force. Our own interpretation, given in 
Part IV. below, is based upon this truth. 



CHAPTER III 

THE PARALLELISM BETWEEN INDIVIDUAL AND RACIAL 
INTERPRETATION 

§ I. The question of Racial Interpretation 

I. The intimate bond existing between the individ- 
ual and the group at every stage of the development of 
the former has been indicated in many recent discussions. 
This bond is so close, the mutual influence so profound, 
that the consideration of the individual's interpretation 
of the world would appear incomplete and partial 
without that of the corresponding movement in organ- 
ised social life. The question, how does the individual 
understand reality? — what interpretation does he put 
upon it at the several stages of his personal develop- 
ment? — suggests the further question, how does the 
human group as a whole, the race at the several epochs 
of its evolution, look upon reality and interpret it? 
Are there any evidences of an advance from one point 
of view to another, of historical progress in the social 
organisation of interest and knowledge? And if so, 
what relation do these two genetic movements hold to 
each other? Has there been any sort of coincidence 
or "concurrence" between the two in the direction of 
progress and in the order of their stages or modes ?^ 

' The necessity of including this problem in the programme of ge- 
netic logic appears when we recall the results of recent anthropological 
research as well as the outcome of certain psychological analyses. Re- 

32 



Individual and Racial Interpretation 33 

In order to approach this question with profit, certain 
explanations have to be made in advance. We have 
already come to a clear understanding as to what the 
individual movement is and comprises; it is necessary 
to be clear also as to what we mean by the racial or 
social movement with which the former is to be com- 
pared. ^ 

search in ethnology is showing more and more clearly that in primitive 
culture the social, the collective, is the leading and controlling factor in 
thought as in conduct; the individual is a social outcome and his per- 
sonal competence and integrity are slowly established in the course of 
social evolution. This is in accord with our results, which go to show 
the inherent common element in individual knowledge at every stage — • 
the reflection, in the most private judgment, of the social conditions of 
its origin. 

The theory of the way the individual understands the world and his 
interpretation of it, cannot dispense with that of social evolution, any 
more than that interpretation itself can dispense with its social support. 
Every question of individual genesis to-day raises questions of social 
evolution. 

^ In approaching this question, we should carefully distinguish it 
from certain other lines of enquiry, with which it may easily be confused. 
In the first place we are not to discuss the question of the endowment 
or capacity of races or groups, either in itself or comparatively. Whether 
mankind has made great progress, little progress, or no progress at all, 
in its hereditary traits, from generation to generation, does not directly 
concern us. Whether or not the child of the civilised group is better 
endowed, more capable, than that of the primitive group — the former 
outstripping the latter if placed in the same social conditions — is not 
for us to ask. Such an enquiry would follow rather than precede our 
proper enquiry ; for the presence of a given sort of interpretation achieved 
by this group or that, might, under certain conditions, throw light upon 
its mental endowment. But even this is not our business. We are 
to enquire into the actual interpretations historically achieved by man- 
kind, and into the order of their achievement; and then to compare the 
results, in both these respects, with the achievements of the normal 
individual in the course of his life history as a conscious person. 

Resuming these points more positively, we may say of the problem of 
racial interpretation that it is a question not of endowment, but of pro- 
duct which, while found in the individual, is not originated entirely by 
him. 



34 Genetic Interpretation 

2. At the outset, we may assume that, in that great 
mass of beHefs we call interpretation, there are not two 
movements, one individual and the other social; there 
is but one — the movement in the internal organisation 
of thoughts and values in the given group. Objectively 
it is constituted in institutions, in laws, rites, customs, 
sanctions. Subjectively, it is reproduced in the individ- 
uals, who in turn give to the group its vital impulse 
and its progressive "uplift." In it all the quite funda- 
mental relation between one factor and the other 
constantly appears. 

The concurrent development of individual and racial 
interpretation is due, therefore, to a single factor, the 
new achievements of individuals so far as they are 
generalised and incorporated in the body of social 
beliefs and customs.^ The successive stages of social 
attainment reflect, in their order as well as in their 
nature, the advances made by individuals. Group 
thought, for example, passes from a stage corresponding 
to the prelogical period of cognition into a stage of 
competent judgment and logical reasoning; but this is 
possible because individuals have already taken the 
necessary transition steps and have brought about 
modifications in the body of social custom and habit. 
Each such advance on the part of individuals, sufficiently 
general and compelling to get the social hearing, would 
produce a progressive step in the interpretation called 
social or racial; and being then subject to social trans- 

' Instead of saying as the biologists do of vital recapitulation — that 
the individual development repeats the genetic series established by 
racial evolution — we should say that the social evolution has been deter- 
mined in its several stages by the essential advances made in indi- 
vidual minds. Of course, for continuous individual development the 
stable and continuous social life is necessary in which the earlier individual 
attainments have permanently taken form. 



Individual and Racial Interpretation 35 

mission and concretion, it would remain a sort of 
stratified racial possession. New generations coming 
after and building farther — as variations in congenital 
equipment or individual force and feeling permitted — 
would repeat the process, depositing anew the incre- 
ments of further social advance. 

These truths would seem to afford sufficient justifica- 
tion of the expectation that a real concurrence in direc- 
tion, in motive, and in stages would show itself between 
the individual's mental progress and the progress of 
the race.^ 

There is, however, a more general way of considering 
the matter, which may be cited in order to bring the 
consideration of racial interpretation into direct line 
with that of the logic of cognition. It is the point of 
view from which we may speak of it as the organisation 
of social interest. 

§2. Racial Interpretation as organised social Interest 

3. The conception of interest has been found a 
fruitful one in theories of meaning and cognition; 
especially so in the consideration of the affective and 
active motives found in the full apprehension and ap- 
preciation of things. We have ourselves^ fotmd that 
these motives take on more extended or more contracted 
forms of organisation about the data of sense ; and that 
in the individual case it is just this organisation which 
constitutes the "interpretation" of what is given. By 
the gourmand, the oyster is interpreted as food; by 

^The writer's little work, History of Psychology (1913), takes up the 
topic in detail (vol. i., chap, i, and vol. ii., chap. 8), interpreting the 
history of psychology in the light of the individual's development in 
dualism. 

* Thought and Things, vol. i., chap. 3. 



36 Genetic Interpretation 

the scientist as mollusc; by the pearl-diver as desirable 
treasure: each interprets the given presentation as 
terminus or satisfaction of his dominant interest. 

But we have seen that in all the organisation of the in- 
dividual's interest, an influence is upon him, amounting 
to a sort of constraint from which he can not escape. 
Not only is his perception of the given data of sense 
subject to obscure influences of social suggestion and 
habit, but the body of meaning given to the data, 
indicating the direction of his interest, is shaped in 
social moulds. The cognitive part of the apprehension 
is generalised and converted into socially common 
objects: and the affective parts are read ejectively and 
imitatively in terms of the opinions and habits of others 
in a way that secures to interest itself a certain collective 
force. In the logical field, knowledge has a force of 
community ; judgment is synnomic : and the equivalent 
result is reached for the intent of appreciation by the 
less definite but equally real processes of affective 
logic. 

We see here, therefore, the concurrence of individual 
and social interpretation in its fundamental modus 
operandi. The individual interest is socially construed 
and confirmed; the social interest is renovated and 
renewed in the vital interests of individuals. There is 
just the one organisation — the common intent to find 
the thing to have this or that meaning. It is an intent 
common to the group and to the individuals which 
make it up: to the group, as it is embodied in social 
tradition and institutions; to the individuals, as it is 
embodied in their personal beliefs and habits of action. 
It is constantly re-created — as it was originally produced 
— by the co-operation of the individual and the 
group. 



Individual and Racial Interpretation 37 

4. With this understanding of the nature and origin 
of racial interpretation, a word may be in place as to 
the proper rules of procedure under which we should 
investigate it. The danger, apparent indeed in much 
of the literature of primitive life and thought, is two- 
fold. On the one hand, we are likely to obscure the 
actual differences between stages of interpretation, as 
of culture in general, by reading into the simpler forms 
the processes of high individual mentality. The fallacy 
of the "implicit," pointed out in our discussion of the 
canons of genetic logic, '^ appears here with pronounced 
effect. The processes of reflective morality and religion 
are read into the primitive man's way of understanding 
the world and of acting upon it. 

On the other hand, one is equally in need of prudence 
and self-restraint in avoiding the other extreme. One 
who is impressed with the seemingly irrational and 
mystical modes of primitive thought is tempted to deny 
the unity of mind in evolution and the continuity of 
racial progress, finding differences in kind between 
primitive and civilised man. 

5. Prom both of these errors our conclusion as to 
the concurrence between individual and racial develop- 
ment should save us. In whatever direction we may 
find the more primitive types of thought to tend — 
however partial, illogical, and crude it may show itself 
to be — we have still to recognise that it has arisen by 
the organisation of individual interests, in which certain 
great motives proper to mankind are predominant. The 
logical interest, as we have seen, develops late. And the 
prelogical organisation of interest is not ruled by logical 
principles; it allows wide latitude to affective, mystical, 

' Thought and Things, vol. i., "Functional Logic," chap, i, sect. 8. 



38 Genetic Interpretation 

and ejective motives which are reflected in a collec- 
tive tradition and a social sanction seeming to us to be 
irrational and superstitious. This being the case, we 
can always say that however widely given cultures, with 
their respective beliefs and customs, vary one from 
another, still each of them shows some predominant 
human motive working itself out in a characteristic 
social product. In the shifting and rearrangement of 
such motives as culture advances, the products are so 
different that only the larger view enables us to include 
them all in the one continuous historical movement. 
The ever-present and sufficient testing and guiding 
principle, however, is this: each characteristic phase of 
culture, wherever and whenever found, can have arisen 
only by the social organisation of essentially human in- 
terests in which now this motive and now that has been 
predominant. The problem in each case is to discover 
that balance of motives which will account for the facts 
observed. 

§ J. The Stages of Interpretation 

6. Assuming this general concurrence — now so far 
justified — we may exhibit the principal stages of inter- 
pretation by means of the following table. In the 
first part (i) the genetic "stages" of development of the 
individual's cognition are presented; in the second (n), 
those of society or the race. The first needs no further 
description : its justification is to be found in the detailed 
expositions of the work already cited. The latter 
constitutes the program of the discussions of the second 
Part of this volume. In both cases, the transition 
periods are indicated by the headings at the points of 
the diagonal lines in the columns marked "modes": 



Individual and Racial Interpretation 39 







TABLE II 




I. 


Individual Interpretation 




Stages 


Modes 


i. 


Prelogical 


i.v^tuitive 

^Quasi-discursive 
ii.<^iscursive 

J^Over-discursive 
iii.^ontemplative 






ii. 


Logical 






iii. 


Hyper-logical 




// 


. Racial Interpretation 




Stages 


Modes 




Prelogical 


i.\Mystical (Religious) 
/- Mythical 


ii. 


Logical 


ii.x^eculative and Scientific 


iii. 


Hyper-logical 


^>Critical 
iii: Contemplative 



It is hardly necessary to suggest the comparison of 
this scheme with the much-discussed "stages" of 
August Comte; the relation of our viev/s to his and to 
those of others is elsewhere adverted to. It will be 
seen that Comte's second and third stages, the "meta- 
physical" and "positive," are both placed in our scheme 
under the one heading of "logical;" that his first or 
"theological" stage is covered in our "mystical;" and 
that to his three, thus made over into two, another, the 
"contemplative," is added. This last, as will appear 
below, becomes, in the sequel, the characteristic feature 
of our own interpretation, as given in Part III, below. 
In other words, the Positivism of the scientific view of 
the world is not the last word; a larger synthesis is 
reached in aesthetic contemplation and in its theory — 
the interpretation afforded by Pancalism. 



PART II. THE HISTORICAL DEVELOP- 
MENT OF INTERPRETATION 



41 



CHAPTER IV 

EARLY RACIAL INTERPRETATION: ITS PRELOGICAL 
CHARACTER 

IN the preceding chapter, the concurren development 
of individual and racial interpretations of objective 
experience of all sorts is pointed out. For the successive 
stages of the latter, the terms already found appropriate 
for the former were employed:^ "prelogical," "logical" 
and "hyper-logical," Our further exposition, dealing 
with the racial progress of interpretation, will follow 
this usage; and the first great period, the " prelogical, " 
will briefly occupy our attention. 

§j. General Character of early Racial Interpretation. 

I. If the account given above of the relation between 
the individual and social motives be correct, certain 
pronounced differences between primitive societies and 
our own should strike our attention at the very outset ; 
differences of a general kind which the later more 
detailed study should tend to confirm and define. If 
it be true that the primitive man's mental processes 
are largely prelogical, then so far as the individual is 
held strictly to social standards and interests, there must 

^ In an important work, to which reference is made below, M. L. 
L^vy-Bruhl also uses the terms logical and prelogical as applicable 
respectively to civilised and primitive thought (L. L6vy-Bruhl, Les 
Fonctions mentales dans les societes inferieures, 1910). See below in this 
chapter, sect. 6. 

43 



44 Genetic Interpretation 

result a flowering of prelogical motives and interests 
unchecked, in great part, by the principles of logical 
organisation and validity. 

Primitive man's understanding of nature and life we 
should expect to be of this nature. It should be shot 
through with emotional, practical, and mystic modes of 
apprehension. The sort of organisation found in the 
individual on the side of affective and emotional rather 
than of discursive logic, should be foimd at the fore. 
All the motives of an illogical and unlogical sort, called, 
from the point of view of superior logical development, 
superstition, fanaticism, prejudice, mysticism and self- 
contradiction, together with the motives arising from 
the social rapport itself, both individualistic and coUec- 
tivistic, should come prominently into play. In the 
absence or relative subordination of control through 
truth and fact, in primitive thought, the motives of 
utility, personal safety, solidarity, tradition, fear, awe, 
prestige, would come on occasion to take each a pre- 
ponderating place. The result would be, from our 
point of view, a state of confusion worse confounded; 
yet in itself organised in social ways. It is as if the 
child were released from the restraints and guidance of 
minds and sanctions more rational and consistent than 
his own ; and were fed only upon illogical and emotional 
matter of apprehension and action. Such is, indeed, 
the place of the child in the primitive group; he is a 
member of a childish society. His thought can rise no 
higher than its source ; he is under social compulsion to 
think and act as his fellows think and act. 

This general fact gives us a sufficient indication of 
the marked differences we should expect the primitive 
interpretation of things to show from that to which we 
are accustomed. It forbids the application of logical 



Early Interpretation, Prelogical 45 

criteria of truth and belief to the thought of primitive 
man. What is reasonable and normal to him may be 
irrational and abnormal to us. The only legitimate 
method of investigation is that of patient observation 
and sympathetic understanding of the primitive man's 
social life. What his mind is and how it works will 
then appear of itself. The most we can say is that 
there are no motives at work, however extreme their 
working may seem to us to be, that are not normal to 
the human mind taken as a whole. Different interests 
may dominate, but all of them are fundamental and 
natural human interests. 

2. A second general consideration occurs to us when 
we consider the conditions of the rise of social life itself. 
No doubt the simplest group is the outcome of selection. 
The group seems to represent a unit in which collective 
utility, secured by some sort of co-operation and union 
of activities, replaces or succeeds the utility of individual 
capacity.^ Selection acts upon groups and the fittest 
group survives along with the type of individual which 
belongs to it. In the animal world, this is seen in the 
utility of the instincts of collective life, by which the 
individuals are held to the performance of acts of co- 
operation. 

In man, the instincts, properly so called — the more 
finished actions of a species, performed without learn- 
ing — are reduced to their minimum, and the group relies 
in their stead upon processes of education and training. 
The result of this is the imperative necessity for strict 
social regulations and sanctions; the very life of the 
group and its members alike is at stake. Hence there 
can be no abrogation or weakening for a moment of the 

' This has been held by various writers. See the author's Darwinism 
and the Humanities, chap. ii. 



46 Genetic Interpretation 

forces of social restraint and direction — of social control 
exercised upon the individual — in the essentials of the 
common life. This is reflected in his willing response to 
the social demands. A social type of individual arises 
who is more and more imitative, obedient, and co-oper- 
ative. The compulsion of social rule, like that of 
biological law, yields to the impulsion of inner motives 
of duty and conscience. Man is progressively socialised 
in the movement of his most intimate personal interests 
and motives. 

3. If this be true, we should expect, the farther back 
we trace human culture, the more emphatic, dominant, 
and irresistible we should find the social means of organ- 
isation and control to be. Primitive man is governed 
by an elaborate system of rules, rites, and mystic 
observances which know no exceptions and show no 
mercy. We are accustomed to think of the "natural 
man" as a sort of primitive "individualist," free from 
our social conventions, and roaming at his own sweet 
will in the broad fields of life. But the very reverse is 
the case. Primitive man is a slave, subject to unheard- 
of severities, brutalities, terrors, sanctions, persecutions, 
all represented by detailed rites and ceremonies that 
make his life a perpetual shiver of dread, and a night- 
mare full of spectres. Nothing is so slight, not even 
his shadow or his dream, as to escape the regulation of the 
mystic powers, speaking in the social code; and nothing 
is grave enough to secure him a moment's respite or 
exemption from the penalties socially decreed. The sav- 
age is never gay; gayety is the product of civilisation. 

§ 2. The social Character of early Racial Interpretation 

4. All this is strikingly confirmed by the later 
anthropological investigations. The general expecta- 



Early Interpretation, Prelogical 47 

tion that early or primitive interpretation would be 
emphatically social and collective in its character, has 
overwhelming confirmation. Recent studies, notably 
those of the French school of sociologists, have brought 
this out quite unmistakably. The theory of repre- 
sentation collective, worked out by Durkheim, Levy- 
Bruhl and others, is based upon detailed observations, 
extending over a broad variety of primitive customs, 
rites and beliefs. Apart from the actual formulation 
of this theory and from its theoretical sociological 
interpretation in a doctrine of the relation of individual 
and society, we may accept the evidence as showing the 
common or collective character of the primitive mean- 
ings attached to things, and construe it in the terms of 
our own research in the field of "common" knowledge 
and feeling in the individual. 

5. We may say, without hesitation, that primitive 
interpretation, considered as common meaning or 
representation collective, is "syndoxic": that is, it is 
apprehended by the individual as being the common 
possession of the group, accepted by others as by him- 
self. He makes no claim to have discovered or even 
to have confirmed it. It is a body of commonly 
accepted teachings — rites, observances, prescriptions, 
prohibitions, and so forth — for which he is not respon- 
sible, but which he accepts as being already established 
and binding. He is brought up from infancy in this 
body of syndoxic beliefs and apprehensions, just as the 
civilised child is reared in a body of socially recognised 
truths and usages. The difference is that at the logical 
stages of social culture, the individual comes sooner or 
later to criticise in some measure the social formulations, 
confirming or rejecting them in some detail, by the use 
of his own individual judgment. In this way the syn- 



48 Genetic Interpretation 

doxic becomes personal and "synnomic." This the 
savage or primitive man can not ordinarily do; he lives 
out his life under the domination of the collective 
tradition into which he is bom. The social standards 
remain the only standards; the individual does not 
break through the social crust. 

The reasons for this state of things will appear as we 
proceed with our analysis. Here we may signalise the 
absolute and compelling character of the elements of 
the social regime upon the individual, especially in the 
practical affairs of life. Society prescribes long and 
weary series of observances, giving no coherent reasons 
for the prescription; and the sanctions are the more 
severe for being occult, mysterious, and vague. 

6. In further illustration of the collective character 
of primitive thought — especially as showing its pre- 
logical nature — we may utilise the results arrived at in 
our consideration of the common element in the individ- 
ual's knowledge. We find certain striking points of 
analogy : points in which the two developments coincide 
or "concur" in the manner pointed out above. ^ 

(i) In the first place the sort of necessity attaching 
to the primitive man's conformity to social rules is in 
general that which comes from a discipline due to 
sanctions external to him. By obedience he comes 
gradually into the social heritage of customs and duties. 
His spontaneous impulsions are trained in social chan- 
nels, and his refractory appetites are curbed by rigorous 

' In the preface to vol. iii. of Thought and Things, " Interest and Art," 
I have pointed out the striking agreement between our results, given in 
vol. i., and those reached for primitive thought by M. L6vy-Bruhl in his 
work Les Fonctions mentales dans les societes inferieures, a work in which 
the recent investigations of anthropologists are collected and interpreted. 
Certain points briefly indicated in that preface are more fully made out 
in the present text. 



Early Interpretation, Prelogical 49 

inhibitions. The penalties are those of an organised 
social order. They are frightful in their severity and 
unbending in their rigour. 

This is only to say that society at this stage of organ- 
isation has not attained the results of individual reflec- 
tive morality. The sanctions of right and duty have 
not replaced those of social convention based on pru- 
dence, fear, awe, and veneration. The active life is 
"syntelic, " a life of common ends, common practises, 
common values, all socially rooted and sanctioned; it 
is not "synnomic" — not dominated, that is, by the in- 
dividual conscience nor regulated by sanctions of an 
inner and moral sort. 

(2) Another important character of this sort of col- 
lective meaning is its dependence upon the actual, the 
realised event or fact, as given in a present or past social 
situation observed or reported, and requiring nothing 
beyond this in the way of confirmation or proof. Once 
allow a certain sympathy between an animal and a man, 
and the animal is henceforth the "friend" of the man and 
his family. Given one fact following another, a mere 
connection in time or place, and a relation is established 
which is inviolable and mystical. The decrees of social 
convention are illustrated or justified by mere accidental 
happenings which, because not submitted to any sort 
of test, are just as open to one interpretation as to 
another, according to the trend of social interest and 
custom. Whatever is already accepted is found to be 
confirmed by new events; whatever contradicts this is 
non-existent, irrelevant. The actual then serves as 
sufficient basis for all sorts of preferential and selective 
interpretations, varying with the established states of 
mind and active attitudes of the group. 

7. These characters of primitive thought find evi- 



50 Genetic Interpretation 

dent illustration in the existence and meaning of the 
totem. Differing among themselves as the theories of 
totemism do, we may still discover a certain basis of 
agreement as to the meaning of the totem to the savage 
himself. It is to him the symbol of his social group, 
the clan, the collective body of his relations natural 
and supernatural; this establishes the central fact of 
his life, his name and identity, by which and through 
which all other facts are to be understood. Apart from 
this group identity, he has no individuality. Facts, 
further, which in no way come into the sphere of the 
totemic influence, can not exist for him; but within the 
all-inclusive circle of interests which the totem repre- 
sents, the rules, prohibitions, injunctions, sanctions, are 
absolute and final. Both in respect to authority and 
in respect to actuality, in giving what is to be accepted 
and in enforcing what is to be desired and avoided, in 
the theoretical reference as in the practical injunction, 
the totem is the syndoxic unit of social organisation, 
and with it of personal belief and practice. ^ 

8. (3) Another approach to the syndoxic significance 
of prelogical racial interpretation is from the side of 
negation. Not only does the group assert and enforce 
certain positive rites and customs, it also established a 
body of prohibitions. There is the social "thou shalt 
not," as well as the social "thou shalt." Of course, in 
more developed society, where logical and reflective 
criteria are established, both in the intellectual sphere 
and in that of practice, the false and the wrong are 
matters of contradiction and opposition established 

' The opinion is beginning to prevail that in totemism as found in 
Central Australian tribes, the most primitive type of culture is to be 
recognised. The recent work of Durkheim, Les Formes elementaires de 
la Vie religieuse, gives a critical and comprehensive account both of 
theories and of totemism itself. 



Early Interpretation, Prelogical 51 

by more or less reasonable rules. "If this is true, that 
is not;" "if this is right, that is not." There are rules 
of logic, cognitive and affective, by which the negative 
establishes itself along with the positive. 

But we have seen, in tracing the stages of develop- 
ment of negation, ^ that before the rise of logical negation 
or denial there exist very important modes of negative 
meaning. Rooted in active preference and selection, 
going back to original instincts and attitudes, there are 
strong movements of acceptance and rejection. There 
are motives of active rejection and of emotional repul- 
sion in the individual, which do not arise from reflection 
or even from knowledge. There are rejections due 
to discomfort, to distaste, to custom, to novelty, to 
personal caprice, all determined by active and emotional 
motives, and some of them rising to the level of logical 
denial in their attempt to justify themselves. 

9. There are two great classes of these active rejec- 
tions. One comprises cases of positive exclusion, 
reached by a reaction of personality, through some one 
of its active interests, against the content or thing 
rejected. The child's rejections, all the way from a bad 
taste to an imwelcome guest, show this motive. It 
exists in a great variety of forms in low and sublogical 
stages of mental process. 

The other case is the mode of rejection known as 
"privation." In it the exclusion of what is rejected, 
incidentally to a positive selection or inclusive of some- 
thing else. Such are the rejections of affection, senti- 
ment, aesthetic appreciation, exclusive interest of all 
kinds. The absorption in the thing chosen and affirmed 

' Thought and Things, vol. i., "Functional Logic," chap, x., and 
vol. ii., "Experimental Logic," chap. vii. Cf. also below, chap, vii., 
§§4.5- 



52 Genetic Interpretation 

involves the exclusion and rejection of something or 
everything beside it. It does not intentionally reject 
a thing because of positive qualities, but only because of 
its non-inclusion in that which is selected for acceptance. 
The child's rejection of every doll but "Biddy" — how- 
ever pleasing under other conditions the new doll might 
be — illustrates this movement of privation. The affec- 
tion for Biddy is exclusive of any rival claimant to her 
place in the heart. 

10. Admitting this distinction between prelogical 
rejection and logical negation, we find in the former a 
valuable clue to the understanding of primitive mind and 
life. The prohibitions, negative rites and observances, 
taboos, etc., of primitive peoples are very remarkable — 
more bizarre and unreasonable oft-times than the posi- 
tive regulations themselves. The savage is hemmed in 
by a thousand rules as to what he should not do, what 
he should abstain from, in thought and action. The 
forbidden is forbidden under penalties of the severest 
nature. Most of what is allowed is still hemmed in 
by restrictions as to time, place, and circumstance, 
involving preliminary rites which are necessary to 
avoid disaster. 

The remarkable phenomena of "taboo," and of the 
distinction between the sacred and the profane, must 
be looked upon as embodying the development of social 
rejections motived by emotional and active interest, 
either direct or remote; or as cases of privation, due to 
social absorption in other things and interests into 
which the thing rejected brings an unwelcome intrusion. 
Assuming, for example, in the later development of the 
religious motive, the belief in an exclusive and intolerant 
deity, we find, as a secondary result, the privative 
rejection of all other religious systems and objects. 



Early Interpretation, Prelogical 53 

Under the totemic system, matters determined in our 
culture by consanguinity, such as the Hmits of marriage, 
personal relationship of various kinds, and their nega- 
tives — such as the definition of incest — are fixed in view 
of the totemic emblem. Marriage between persons of 
the same totem is forbidden. These things are not at 
all matters of reasoning or logic; they are matters of 
positive social belief and preoccupation, fixed in rigid 
collective prescriptions both positive and negative. 
This means of course, in the first instance, the' positive 
character of the social organisation of interest, of which 
these social rejections are an aspect; and we may note 
the fact that the rejections of the individual like his 
acceptances are socially regulated. The body of in- 
terpretation, negative as well as positive, is socially 
prescribed. The laws of social prohibition are collec- 
tively formulated, collectively sanctioned, collectively 
enforced; they are brought within the definition of 
the whole body of traditional interpretation as being 
syndoxic. But its syndoxic or common character is 
privative, not logical; it is of the sort that comes from 
affective organisation. 

(4) Those points may be summed up by saying that 
primitive life is essentially religious ; since it is in reli- 
gious belief that the social and individual values and 
sanctions are alike conserved. It is the "theological" 
period of interpretation. The religious symbol stands, 
as we are to see later on, for the spirit of the community. 

§ J. The a-dualistic Character of early Racial 
Interpretation 

II. We have noted the a-dualistic character of pre- 
logical thought in the individual; the absence of the 



54 Genetic Interpretation 

dualisms which mark fully developed logical or dis- 
cursive thought. ^ There are two important senses in 
which logical thinking, and the state of mind called 
reflective, are dualistic. There is, first, the dualism 
of "self and objects of thought, " thinker and thoughts; 
this is the most refined form of dualism. It requires the 
conception of an inner life in which ideas or thoughts 
exist, and over against this that of realities to which 
these ideas or thoughts refer. This is properly called 
the "dualism of reflection." 

But prior to this, yet persisting in the period of re- 
flection, there is the dualism of substances, of classes 
of realities, the dualism of "mind and body." The 
progression of meaning by which this dualism germin- 
ates in early thought and comes to its maturity in the 
mode of judgment has been worked out in detail, * 

Even the most casual examination of the thought 
and customs of primitive peoples shows that both these 
sorts of dualism, understood in any full sense, are ab- 
sent. The material of experience is the same ; but it is 
organised in other ways. For as we should expect, the 
absence of the forms of dual classification — mind and 
body, thinker and objects of thought — shows itself not 
merely in the simple absence of the familiar effects 
of such modes of division, ^ but in the freedom given 
to other motives which civilised individual thought 
hardly suggests to come forward with force and em- 
phasis. 

'For details, see Thought and Things, vol. i,, "Functional Logic," 
chap. iii. 

2 See Ibid, chap, x., xi. The corresponding development in Greek 
philosophy, considered as culminating in the dualism of Descartes, is 
traced out in the writer's History of Psychology, vol. i. 

3 Such as belief in dead matter, the purely spiritual soul, the inner 
realm of experience, etc., all of which are late products of reflection. 



Early Interpretation, Prelogical 55 

12. In view of this, the various attempts which have 
been made to interpret primitive thought by certain 
more simple principles, such as association of ideas, 
animism, and so forth, have not been altogether suc- 
cessful. The fault of such theories consists either in 
making use of one term of a certain dualism, reduc- 
ing it to a vague shadow of itself — as the "mind" term 
in the theory of "animism" — and attributing it to the 
savage; or on the other hand, in simply removing the 
logical ftmction altogether from the primitive man's 
mind,' and attempting to apply some simple principle 
of mental organisation, such as "association of ideas" 
or "reasoning by analogy. " In all these theories alike, 
the assumption is made that the earlier stage of mental 
organisation, from which logical dualisms and classifica- 
tions are supposed to be absent, is simply that which 
would be left if the logical functions had been subtracted 
from the individual consciousness as we know it. This re- 
sults in a mutilated individual function, not a genuinely 
prelogical social one. How social thought organises it- 
self, at periods at which the individual is not yet logical, 
and under the traditions of a social experience and habit 
still more primitive and un-individual, can be under- 
stood only by the actual investigation of primitive life. 
It can not be found in an individual brought up under 
other social conditions, however we may mutilate him. 
The working of the prelogical motives in the social set- 
ting proper to them must be allowed to show for 
itself. 

13. The more positive side of primitive interpreta- 
tion, due to the actual organisation of prelogical motives 
on a large social scale, will be taken up again below. 
Here we may note certain respects in which such 
prelogical thought shows the lack of the organizing 



56 Genetic Interpretation 

principles of discursive thinking: respects, that is, in 
which it is truly a-dualistic. 

(i) The absence of the distinction between thoughts 
or ideas and actual realities — the dualism between 
the sphere of internal life or reflection and that of 
the external world in which things remain relatively 
constant — shows itself in certain striking confusions of 
primitive thought. It appears in the primitive man's 
inability to take a purely cognitive or disinterested 
point of view. The idea of an external system of 
things, existing in its neutrality apart from human 
interests and efforts, is indeed a late achievement; 
it has reached its full statement only in the positivism 
of modern science. But even its earlier form, in 
which it requires merely a certain discriminating per- 
ception and memory of things as such, apart from their 
value in practice, ceremony, and symbolism — even this 
is undeveloped in primitive societies. And this in the 
face of the compelling recognition on occasion of external 
things and maintenance of their cognitive value. ^ The 
savage denies the identity of an arrow with itself, 
refuses to call it an arrow, seeing in it a symbol of 
totemic rites and social values, which give it a different 
identity; but at the same time he seeks out the arrow 
and uses it as such, in the practical pursuit of game or in 
battle. It is as in the case of the child who refuses to 
admit that the doll is merely a thing of wood and paint, 
seeing in it the identity of a loved and cherished com- 
panion; but who also throws it about, sticks pins into 
it, and uses it generally under the practical admission 
of just the point before denied. 

14. The reason of this would seem to be, in both 

^ This fact M. L6vy-Bruhl seems to overlook in saying that the savage 
can not isolate the object simply as perceived. 



Early Interpretation, Prelogical 57 

cases alike, the inability to isolate the content of 
apprehension as something which remains fixed, as just 
and only what it is, while the selective meaning or 
intent changes with the particular interest aroused. 
The separation of these two sorts of meaning from one 
another requires the recognition of the objective thing 
as something controlled apart from the selective and 
preferential use made of it, that is, apart from the 
subjective sphere of mind.^ The dualism between the 
sphere of the external and that of the inner is absent. 
The former requires the beginning of the mediation of 
the real external thing through the idea which recalls 
and represents it; the other, the mediation of the fur- 
ther selective value or intent of the thing, through the 
use of the idea as means to personal ends. ^ 

In the absence of this well developed dualism, we 
should expect just the sort of confusion that we find: 
the taking of a thing to be what, and only what, the 
dominant and exclusive interest, as socially determined, 
makes of it. On occasion, the interests change: one 
gives place to another, the thing takes on a different 
signification. The most curious results are produced 
in the domain of classification, where classes, due to 
emotional and active interest, take the place of those 
of a logical character that civilised man almost ex- 
clusively employs. 

The result is striking enough; from the logical point 

^ In Greek speculation the point of view of the subjective as such, 
in distinction from the objective physical order, came only with Soc- 
rates, in whom the Sophistic movement culminated. But of course 
practical life among the Greeks, as everywhere, made use of the dis- 
tinction — as does the savage and the child — without formulating it in a 
reflective interpretation. See my History of Psychology, vol. i., chap. iv. 

^ Both of these processes were introduced into Greek thought in the 
"relativity" of the Sophists. See ibid., vol. i., chap. iv. 



58 Genetic Interpretation 

of view it is merely a sad confusion. The savage seems 
to fail to see, hear, feel, straight, to have normal associa- 
tions, to remember correctly. One would take his 
imagination to be his only vigorous faculty, besides his 
intense and sombre emotions. He is haunted by fearful 
images. As already remarked, he is seldom careless; 
he experiences a wide gamut of social emotions, in the 
categories of which his perceptions are organised. A 
body of collective representation so assimilates his sen- 
sations that he does not isolate facts or judge in the 
light of what we call truth. 

But when we recognise that a compelling and preva- 
lent belief and custom, which does not separate the mere 
thing from all these accretions of social intent and 
sanction, absorbs him mentally, we see his position 
and understand something of his thought. He differs 
from the civilised child in this, that the latter is trained 
to become an independent observer and logical indi- 
vidual, to distinguish between what he sees and what 
he desires or prefers, to use the thing consciously as a 
means to personal and social ends, without denying its 
separate existence or distorting its objective meaning. 
All this the savage fails to get from his training; his 
teachers are as simple as he is. On the contrary, his 
training forces him to see only with the eyes of the 
social group, to hear only with its ears. The traditional 
mystical, religious, emotional reading of all his sensa- 
tions and perceptions is given to him with his mother's 
milk; and in competition with the predominant interest 
of social solidarity, his motives to personal thinking get 
no chance. 

15. (2) Akin to this is the other phase of dualism by 
which the life of reflection is clarified and illuminated, 
that between mind or life, considered as something 



Early Interpretation, Prelogical 59 

spiritual, and the dead material thing. Mind and body- 
are terms of a substantial cleft in nature; not to dis- 
tinguish the terms of this dualism is to lapse into evident 
confusion. This appears in striking form in early 
societies; and it is complicated by the peculiar inter- 
pretations placed upon animals in almost all primitive 
groups. 

That this is in its nature prelogical appears from the 
absence of two great distinctions under which logical 
thought always labours : the distinction of persons from 
things, and the distinction of persons as individuals, 
from one another — especially of the personal self from 
other selves, of ego from alter. Both of these distinc- 
tions are further complicated in logical thought by the 
place assigned to animals, a matter which has been the 
occasion of certain interesting turns in the development 
of thought. In primitive thought, the place assigned 
to the animal is most suggestive. Considering primitive 
life, therefore, from the point of view of these two phases 
of dualism, let us take up the more developed first. 

16. The radical distinction between mind and body 
is evidently not present in primitive thought; its 
absence is seen in the wide range of facts cited by 
anthropologists under the heading of "animism." 
These facts give unmistakable evidence that primitive 
man does not distinguish inanimate nature as such from 
animate beings, but apprehends the entire world of 
things as having dynamic and mystic properties akin 
to those of life and mind. ^ 

' This is not, however, to accept the "animistic" theory — which in 
its traditional form tends to make the primitive man a duaHst rather 
than the reverse, attributing to him a concept of mind which he is 
supposed to use to interpret body — but merely to utilise the facts cited, 
as evidence of the lack of dualism. To the positive interpretation of the 
facts we are to return again below. 



6o Genetic Interpretation 

Various facts show that the personal body is a source 
of difficulty and embarrassment, as we have seen it 
to be also in the development of individual thought.^ 
The body is the locus of the most subjective attributes 
and activities, such as volitions, affections, and appetitive 
tendencies ; but as a body it is, at the same time, a phy- 
sical thing among physical things. In primitive thought, 
this embarrassment appears in the apprehension of all 
physical bodies as centres of both sorts of properties; 
and this universal complication of the two delays and 
renders difficult their later differentiation. The mind 
or soul is a thin vaporous body within the grosser 
person.* What appears to us as a confusion, however, 
is simply the recognition of things as they appear, an 
undifferentiated mass of phenomena which only later 
thought succeeds in distributing in dualistic categories. 

A wide range of facts in connection with the rites 
attaching to physiological processes and fimctions — 
facts of birth, death, puberty, marriage, tribal initiation, 
personal cleansing and preparation for the chase, 
religious purification, and so forth — show to what degree 
the body is the centre of mystic a-dualistic beliefs con- 
cerning the nature and destiny of the soul. The many 
oddities of teaching which allow of the violation of 
spacial and temporal relations, the reverence for 
dreams and for the shadow of the person, the fear of 
physical monstrosities, all bear witness to the general 
fact, at least, that minds and bodies are not clearly 
distinguished. 

1 7. Along with this confusion between the living and 

^ Thought and Things, vol. i., "Functional Logic," chap, v., sects. 5 fif. 

' Early Greek thought retained this idea of soul as very refined 
matter. Probably not until St. Augustine did speculative thought 
attain the concept of a purely spiritual — non-material — soul or self. 
See my History of Psychology, vol. i., chap. vi. 



Early Interpretation, Prelogical 6i 

inanimate — a difference which seems to us so evident 
and natural — the other sort of a-duaHsm, spoken of 
above as the confusion of persons inter se, is to be found, 
as it is also in the immature individual. There is the 
failure to distinguish "selves" as such — one's own 
self from others, "ego" from "alter." This confusion, 
as we call it in our dualistic enlightenment, is so deep- 
seated and fundamental that it colours primitive life 
and thought everywhere. The reason for it is the 
social character of the individual's training and disci- 
pline in self-hood and its responsibilities. Instead of 
personal identity and individuality, primitive societies 
develop a collective identity, in which the individual 
is merged. So radical is this that the stages through 
which the consciousness of self passes, as shown in the 
individual's development, are most painfully and slowly 
achieved by the race. ^ 

Looking at this series of progressive stages, which 
need not be enumerated here in detail, ^ from the point 
of view of social organisation and growth, we find cer- 
tain things worth noting in the racial development. 

1 8. (i) The movement is not from the individualistic 
as such toward the collective; not at all. It is from 
an original impersonality, the primitive neutrality and 
lack of distinction of mere animation, towards a collec- 
tivity, which in turn undergoes various transformations 
in the progress of collective classification — totemic, 
religious, tribal, and so forth. The subjective and 

' This appears also in the history of speculative thought. Theories 
of psychic "atomism" and monadism, or postulates of the isolation 
and impenetrability of selves inter se, do not occur in Greek thought; 
although practical individualism was sufficiently in evidence. And 
this in spite of the fact that physical atomism was clearly formulated. 

^ For details, see the writer's Social and Ethical Interpretations, 4th 
ed., chap. i. 



62 Genetic Interpretation 

living is distinguished from the objective and dead only 
in the development of certain interests; it does not 
take on the exclusive forms of logical classification. 
The determination of the single self finally over against 
other selves, comes only very late, when the logical 
and speculative interests are awakened. Before this 
in primitive societies the self is collective; it develops 
with the practical interests of the group, and its dis- 
tinctions and oppositions are those proper to groups — 
families, totemic divisions, clans, and so forth. The 
meaning of individuality attaches to these larger units. 
The single person explicitly declares himself to be 
identical with his group, with his clan-totem, not with 
himself ; and as other individuals are also identical with 
the same group, they all "participate" in a common 
collective identity. 

This appears in the mass of evidence collected by the 
ethnologists, ^ which shows that the primitive individual 
does not and can not consider himself, even physically, 
a separate, distinct, self-identical being. He is one 
with his social class, through the unity of the self- 
meaning of that class. The material of the subjective 
comes from the group — symbolised often by an animal 
species — and retiuns to it again by the ejective pro- 
cesses of affective generalisation. In individuating him- 
self, the savage individuates the class, the collective unit. 
Moreover, a great variety of inanimate things, comprised 
in the range of the totemic influence, may be included. " 

(2) It follows that in respect to both dualisms — that 
of mind and body, and that of ego and alter — the 
germinating distinctions proceed in the interest and 
for the consciousness of the group. Whatever the col- 

' Interpreted in the sense of the text by M. L6vy-Bruhl, loc. cit. 
' Durkheim, La Vie religieuse. 



Early Interpretation, Prelogical 63 

lective usage and interest touches and claims becomes 
member and part of the collective self — persons, ani- 
mals, utensils, weapons, dream personages, shadows, 
the dead, the mythical, the hero of tradition, the deity 
of the tribe. All these mean the same self, in the col- 
lective sense, and share in the mystical ownership and 
participation. The man is brother, other self, to the 
dog, the feather, the star, all because they and he are 
one in the collective life and interest of the common 
group-consciousness . 

19. This extraordinary state of things is not dis- 
turbed, as we have already intimated, when the other 
dualism — that of mind and body — is also entertained. 
The hierarchy of interests and their relative integrity is 
illustrated. Each of the dead objects, to us so diverse 
in nature, although, along with man, a member of the 
group-self, nevertheless maintains, for the subordinate 
interests and ends of practical life, its separate identity 
also. For shooting, the arrow is an arrow ; for cooking, 
the pot is a pot and the fire is a fire. Mere things 
are not such because they are determined by certain 
physical properties as not being persons, but only because 
they are determined as being temporarily or permanently 
excluded from other collective interests. The mere thing 
is the socially^ excluded, the non- tribal, the unmeaning 
thing. 

This sort of distinction is, of course, more or less in 
the line of the coming logical classification of persons 
and things; since persons represent at the fullest the 
social values and interests, which are oftenest and most 
easily dislodged from the mere clods, the dead stocks 
and stones. But still the meaning of the distinction 
remains that due to the collective identity and interest 
with its correlative exclusions. 



64 Genetic Interpretation 

20. Both these senses, in which dualism in the 
logical form is absent, find illustration in the place 
held by animals in primitive life and thought. Author- 
ities have frequently noted the utter unreasonableness 
of primitive attitudes toward animals and the complete 
disorder of primitive thinking about them. This 
obscurity is due not to the complexity of the subject, 
but to the embarrassment arising from the mystic and 
collective modes of apprehension of the primitive con- 
sciousness itself. Witness the totemic system as a 
whole and in detail. The animal may be a mere thing; 
as in the chase, slaughter, and consumption of game. 
Again certain animals — and any animal in its place — 
may share in the mystical meaning of the group-self. 
The interest invoked and the rites and ceremonies 
performed in the pursuit of that interest merge the 
animal with the man in the collective unity. 

§4. The relatively a-logical Character of early Racial 
Interpretation 

Coming now to enquire more closely into the positive 
nature of the organisation of social interests, by which 
primitive interpretation is constituted, we find certain 
outstanding facts which establish its prelogical char- 
acter. Before noting the positive principles involved 
we may point out in what respects it fails to fulfil the 
positive marks of the logical. 

21. (i) In the first place, it does not recognise the 
logical principle of "excluded middle. " This goes with 
the fact that primitive negation, as we saw above, does 
not proceed by logical exclusion, but by positive and 
active social rejection. The classes established in this 
way, not being logically exclusive, may overlap one 



Early Interpretation, Prelogical 65 

another; the same "thing" may be in two or more 
classes, may be excluded at one time and not at another, 
may escape altogether the "either-or" of logical dis- 
junction. The mutual opposition of classes, whereby 
a logical whole is exhausted, does not arise and the 
logical consequences of such exhaustion do not appear. 

(2) This shows itself explicitly in the evident absence 
of logical contradiction in the thought of primitive 
peoples. They do not seem to be troubled by the 
demand we make uponi our experience that it be con- 
sistent. They do not feel the need of rejecting a thing 
because they have accepted its opposite. Their canon 
of acceptibility is something quite different — emotional 
and conative satisfaction, the fulfilment of a social 
interest. This really arises from the state of things 
described above — the absence of a classification which 
requires mutual exclusion and exhaustion; for without 
opposing classes, contradiction in the logical sense can 
not arise. 

(3) Many of the more superficial peculiarities of 
primitive thought arise from the same fundamental 
defect. The classes recognised are bizarre and obscure. 
Things are to the savage identical, which seem to us 
absolutely different and contradictory. Even numer- 
ical difference may constitute identity. The class is a 
matter of emotional and preferential value; a potency 
of harm, or of good, or of social utility, or of tribal 
advantage; such are the lines of distinction. The 
class is teleological, not logical. The interests are 
predominately active and affective; and the more ex- 
clusive social interests reduce the lesser personal ones to 
a lower and less important place. 

(4) Hence also the lack of logical inference and argu- 
mentation. The force of logical necessity is absent; 



66 Genetic Interpretation 

the value of the universal is not seen. Instead, the 
savage cites mere juxtaposition of events or objects, 
analogy, the happening of omens, the power of rites 
and ceremonies — in all of which a certain compulsion 
of a dynamic and social sort is recognised. The novel 
is to him of supreme importance, for it reveals an un- 
known and real working of the power behind and within 
nature. The eclipse, the white man, the sudden attack 
of disease, the drought, these are omens of high signifi- 
cance. They give full play to the interest that is fulfilled 
in the realm of superhuman and mystical values. These 
agencies must be won over to the group interest, when 
to us they would be explained in the pursuit of the 
interest of knowledge. 

Objectively, this appears in the methods of personal 
and social intercourse; discussion and argument give 
place to citation of ominous events and the invocation 
of social and supernatural sanctions. The processes of 
logical substitution and deduction are replaced by social 
conversion and confirmation, along with the appeal 
to established custom and belief. Conformity takes the 
place of logical community, the force of social constraint 
that of personal conviction. The motives of logical 
thought in general are not yet released. 

With this more general statement of the superficial 
aspects of primitive interpretation, covered by the term 
a-logical, before us, we may now pass on to its charac- 
terisation. It recalls of itself the prelogical and affective 
organisation of the individual's interest. ^ 

' Much of this chapter and the following (v) were presented in 
substance to the Psychological Seminary of Professor H. C. Warr'=!n, 
at Princeton University, in June, 1914. 



CHAPTER V 

EARLY RACIAL INTERPRETATION: ITS POSITIVE 
CHARACTER 

§j. The social Organisation of primitive Interest 

ENOUGH has been said to show that the term pre- 
logical has a definite meaning. Racially con- 
sidered, it is a-logical in all the respects just enumerated. 
The further question arises in what directions other 
than logical the organisation of the interests of the 
social group takes on positive form? Is it analogous — 
and if so, how far — to the organisation of the individual's 
interests before the rise of explicit logical process? 

I. It has already been intimated in what general 
respects we should expect racial interpretation, as 
socially constituted, to depart from the lines of indi- 
vidual thought. The individual, in civilised communi- 
ties, lives in a group which has itself reached the logical 
stage ^; its social tradition and its legal and conventional 
sanctions are reasonable in their intent, being cast in 
more or less rational form. Hence the individual, 
even when himself immature and prelogical in his 
thought, is constantly impressed and persuaded, 
educated and initiated, in lines leading on, by all 

' The fact that in a great many things civilised society is ruled by 
convention and remains essentially irrational does not impair this gen- 
eral statement. Society can be logical when the reformer or moralist 
wakes it up to the necessity of being so. 

67 



68 Genetic Interpretation 

manner of pedagogical short-cuts, to independent logical 
thought — or at least, to the semblance of it. Reasons, 
whether good or bad, are given for everything. The 
civilised individual, then, is not left free to develop 
the prelogical interests in their imchecked and spon- 
taneous forms. 

The savage child, on the contrary, is impressed in 
quite a different direction. He comes into a prelogical 
social heritage, as the civilised child comes into a more 
or less logical one. In him the full development of 
prelogical motives and social ends is free to show itself. 
The social interests and utilities, the social impulsions 
and sanctions, the social rites and observances — in 
short the social modes of organisation — dominate his 
mental development. 

This leads us to expect that the racial type of inter- 
pretation will show marked characters due to the flower- 
ing of purely prelogical factors, which are not inhibited, 
but the rather encouraged, by the type of organisation 
already in force in fact and in tradition. 

§ 2. The affective Nature of Primitive Generalisation 

2. The first question to arise in this more positive 
enquiry is that of classification or generalisation. How 
does the primitive man, the primitive tribe, classify 
things and events? Does he identify a new object, 
for example, by its external marks, and classify it as 
belonging to a general class of objects already familiar? 
This would be to proceed along the line followed by 
the cognitive interest, the interest in objective truth. 

It is evident that this is not the procedure of the 
savage. His interest in the new, as in the old, is not 
that of mere recognition or curiosity. His attitude 



Racial Interpretation: Its Character 69 

is one of interested caution, fear, respect, awe. The 
physical properties of the thing open to his inspection 
are but its superficial marks; he expects it to mani- 
fest hidden and mysterious energies. Hence his inter- 
pretation takes account of accompanying phenomena, 
near or remote, of association with powerful agencies, of 
occult signs and omens. The position of the moon, 
the angle of the sun, the length of the shadows, the 
colour of the heavens, the flight of birds, the sayings of 
the oracles, the behaviour of sacrifices, the presence 
and character of dreams, the long-past event recalled 
— all these things give meaning and significance to the 
new thing. The generalisation effected is not one of 
mere cognition, but one of motivation, emotion, mystic 
participation, utilising the lines of association and 
knowledge merely as cues to indicate the direction in 
which the current of affective interest is to flow. The 
great casts of fate, the issues of life and death, the 
interests of tribe and family are the alternatives in- 
volved. The new thing has such a meaning; it is lucky 
or unlucky, favourable or unfavourable, friendly or 
hostile, with us or against us; its neutrahty is a mere 
screen to its potencies of good or ill. The savage does 
not care for the mere thing; he wishes to know what 
sort of larger recondite mystic meaning and power the 
thing participates in, and what influence, fateful for 
better or for worse, its presence typifies. ^ 

Not that he does this reflectively and intentionally; 
not at all. This is his spontaneous way of respond- 
ing to experience. His emotional interest grasps the 

^ While recognising that religious distinctions such as those present in 
totemic classes, are of the highest importance because of their social im- 
port, still we need not go with Durkheim to the extreme of basing all 
classification, including the logical, on religion. 



70 Genetic Interpretation 

data of sense and organises them affectively. The tide 
of emotional interest flows over the mere fact and the 
presence of the thing becomes just that of its mystic 
meaning. While we, with our developed cognitive 
interests, naturally explore the thing, isolating it 
individually and freeing it of its ambiguities; he, with 
equal readiness, passes by its individuality, its detach- 
ment, and scents its intimate aroma of good or bad 
values, feels its participation in a class of powers that 
strike or bless. 

3. This state of things, fully established by recent 
anthropologists, is readily explained in terms of what 
we have found to be the method of affective generalisa- 
tion in the individual.^ The method is the same. In 
the individual of our society, it is held in check and 
corrected as we have suggested, by the instruction, 
example, sanctions, of a social tide that sets in a different 
direction. But the same motives are present. In 
primitive society they have full opportunity to develop 
themselves. 

The process consists in the formation, in the course 
of active and affective experience, of "emotional ab- 
stracts," active dispositions, attitudes, and moods. 
These take the place of cognitive classes; to one of 
these each new experience is assimilated, at the expense 
of its cognitive and logical relations. Emotional 
attitudes, active tendencies and habits, identities of 
value, take the place in the mental life of the similari- 
ties and identities of objective fact. These are general 
classes, in a true sense; but they have the force of 
general utilities, general values, selective and personal 
meanings, not in the first instance, at least, of general 
and impersonal sorts of fact, truth or existence. 

' Thought and Things, vol. iii., "Interest and Art," chap. vii. 



Racial Interpretation: Its Character 71 

There is a real memory and recognition of feelings; 
and with this goes the generalisation of affective 
experiences in moods, sentiments, and active attitudes, ^ 
which take the form of personal preferences, interests, 
and tendencies. When by analogy, association, or 
suggestion, a new event excites such an attitude, an 
affective "general" establishes itself, giving meaning 
and class to the new experience. Thus a development 
is secured to the active processes of the individual, in 
relative independence of the growth of cognition and 
knowledge, but also is relative relation to it. The 
mental life is emotionalised, so to speak, where ours 
is intellectualised. Things are seen in the light of 
their mobility and potency, not in the light of their 
passivity and stability. The dominant interest is that 
of welcome or avoidance. The apparent and super- 
ficial properties of things become merely signs of hid- 
den values, means to personal and social ends. The 
emphasis throughout becomes teleological ; with the 
result that logical affirmations and negations, contra- 
dictions and exclusions, are insignificant in comparison 
with the acceptances and rejections resulting from the 
excitements, hesitations, and revulsions of the life of 
feeling and will. 

4. All this is socially established in categories of 
tradition and custom. Its values are formulated in 
rites and ceremonies, its sanctions enforced by penal- 
ties of life and death, its forms rooted in the history of 
family, clan, and tribe, and cemented by the shedding 
of blood, and its heroes glorified in myth and story, 
the literary rendering of the corporate life. All the 
forces of the social organisation are enlisted on the side 

' Thought and Things, vol. iii., chap, vi., and the literature of 
"affective memory" there cited. 



72 Genetic Interpretation 

of this mystical and emotional logic. What chance 
has thought as such to free itself? 

§j. Imitation and Ejection in primitive Thought 

Assuming that this body of mystical and emotiona. 
tradition is socially established, we may now enquire 
how it is socially maintained — by what processes of 
conversion and confirmation, as between individuals, 
and of common reading in forms of social prescription 
and sanction. 

5. The establishment of great generalisations of 
conduct, emotion, and mystic observance, through 
social agencies and with reference to social sanctions, 
as just described, would seem on the surface to be a 
sufficient reason for their continued collective force 
and form. The individuals are all formed on social 
models, and trained in the same beliefs and observ- 
ances. But we have found that differences exist be- 
tween cognitive and affective modes of organisation 
in the matter of the establishment and maintenance 
of social community of thought. So far as the social 
matter, cast in tradition and current in social life, is 
formulated in cognitive and verbal form, each indi- 
vidual can absorb it through imitation and instruction. 
Thus the great body of formulated knowledge and 
belief is transmitted and conserved. There remains 
over, however, the more intimate part of the indi- 
vidual's conformities, covered by his personal feelings, 
motives, and attitudes as such, to which the repre- 
sentative forms of knowledge can not do justice. 

This has been brought out in detail in our considera- 
tion of affective logic. ^ We have found that "generals" 

^Thought and Things, vol. iii., " Interest and Art," chaps, vi., vii. 



Racial Interpretation: Its Character 73 

of action and feeling, representing repeated affective 
experiences, arise in the individual's mental life; but 
that some further process of conversion into social 
coin is required to secure their currency and social 
recognition. 

For example, externally considered, the religious 
rites, being socially prescribed, become common pro- 
perty ; and the literal fulfilment of these rites in common 
is easy enough ; but the value attaching to their observ- 
ance, as socially edifying, morally expansive and 
healing, as well as of personal satisfaction to the indi- 
vidual, can not be formulated. It can be symbolised, 
but in order to be symbolised, the meaning, however 
vague, must be real. There is here a mass of affective 
meaning, vital to the individual's observance and con- 
stituting the final motive, social no less than individual, 
which is in some way to be made available for col- 
lective use. Witness the undefinable but supreme mys- 
tic meaning of the totem. Even in civilised life, as 
we know, the essential spiritual values are in constant 
danger of being lost in mere verbal and social form. 
The spirit departs, leaving only the letter; the transi- 
tions of spiritual meaning may be enormous, while the 
external and representative form remains unchanged. 

That this is true in primitive societies follows from 
the fact of progress itself. Progress represents repeated 
deviations away from rigid conformity, variations in the 
individual sense of value, which are in some way worked 
over into the body of social beliefs and observances. 

6. Pursuing our comparative method, we think 
at once of the affective conversion which proceeds 
by the great processes of ejection and idealisation.* 

' See Thought and Things, vol. iii., "Interest and Art," chaps, vi. and 
viii. 



74 Genetic Interpretation 

It is by "ejection" that the values of general feeling 
and habit are made social and collective, passing from 
the sphere of individual feeling into that of social com- 
munity and unity of action, and secure the force of 
common consent and sanction. All this is shown in the 
remarkable series of facts upon which so much store 
has been set by the British school of anthropologists 
under the term "animism." Animism is a phenom- 
enon of ejection ; it illustrates the conversion of indi- 
vidual self-values into social meaning, the integration 
of private selves in the collective self. It is the leading 
motive of primitive morality, and of the idealisation 
which goes with it, in the great movements of early 
religion; to these, taken together, is due the essential 
mysticism of primitive thought. 

§4. Prifnitive Animism and Mysticism^ 

7. The extent and variety of the phenomena of 
"animism" in primitive thought have been brought 
out with abundant detail by anthropologists. The 
hypothesis of animism as an explanation has itself 
taken on varied forms. What these have in common 
is the recognition of the tendency of the primitive man 
to interpret, or to act as if he interpreted, inanimate 
things as in some sense living or having minds. Nothing 
in nature seems to him to be dead, motionless, quite 
free from powers such as those which persons possess. 

This has been understood by many anthropologists 
to mean that the savage, by some more or less conscious 
act, reads his idea of mind or life into things. Persons 
and living things are by right so understood; but in- 

' Most of this paragraph has already appeared in the article, "The 
Religious Interest," Sociological Review, Oct., 1913. 



Racial Interpretation: Its Character 75 

animate things only by some sort of secondary process 
in which the true apprehension is supplemented by 
the tendency to "animate." 

When this latter or secondary process is understood 
as explicitly following upon an earlier reading of the 
thing as lifeless, a dualism between persons and things 
is attributed to the savage upon the basis of which the 
animism proceeds. On this understanding, the op- 
ponents of the animists charge these anthropologists 
with attributing a complex dualistic process of inter- 
pretation to the primitive man. Whether this be true 
or not of any given writer, it is still important to bring 
out the fact that such a charge is not necessarily valid. 

There are, in fact, no less than three different atti- 
tudes, on the part of primitive man, which may be 
described with some appropriateness by the term 
"animism," attitudes which, from the genetic point 
of view, it is easy to distinguish and estimate. 

8. In the first place, the primitive "look" of things, 
before the distinctions of mind from body and of 
inanimate objects from living beings arose, would be 
in a certain way animistic just by lacking these distinc- 
tions. The cognitive interest not having been differ- 
entiated from the body of affective and social interests, 
things would not be apprehended as constant, regular, 
and law-abiding in their behaviour; but would be 
interpreted by means of the only mental classes then 
operative, those which represented the larger affective 
and active movements of consciousness. Whatever 
active motives and interests were operative, it is to 
these that the external data would be assimilated. 
Things could only mean what consciousness, at that 
stage of development, could understand or intend them 
to mean. 



76 Genetic Interpretation 

As a fact, this sort of interpretation, when present 
in the mind of the savage, would be shot through with 
emotional, active, and collective elements, and it 
would appear to the critical observer of primitive 
thought to be confused, mystical, and animistic. It 
is animistic in the sense that the first things of experi- 
ence, the undifferentiated stuff of the inner life, would 
be charged potentially with the motives of a later 
dualism. The scientific observer is right in using the 
term "animism," but wrong in interpreting the facts 
in terms of a developed dualism. In view of its char- 
acter as being first-hand and a-dualistic, we may call 
this first stage "spontaneous or a-dualistic animism."'^ 

9. In the second place — and constituting a second 
stage — there is the sort of animism which arises through 
the processes of affective logic, that is, through the 
organisation of feeling, interest, action under social 
conditions. It issues in the general interests of the 
personal and social life and their conversion and pro- 
pagation in the social body. The process is that 
whereby the mass of affective interest, embodying an 
interpretation of things and events in emotional and 
active terms, is subject to "ejective" reading generally. 
This is practically unhindered by cognitive discrimina- 
tions such as those which the dualisms of mind and 
body and animate and inanimate would impose. "Af- 
fective generals," "emotional abstracts" — technical 
terms suggested in recent literature for the moods, 

' The diflficulty of naming it is the same as that felt, for the same 
reason, in the case of the early stages of reflection which preceded the 
duaHstic interpretations of the world. Early Greek speculation was not 
really materialistic nor physical, properly speaking, but a-dualistic. 
I have used the term "projective" {History of Psychology, vol. i.) as a 
proper designation of this period, as preceding those to which the terms 
"objective" and "subjective" properly apply. 



Racial Interpretation: Its Character 77 

dispositions, and emotional habits thus formed — are 
passed back and forth in the give-and-take of social 
life, each individual using the common social interpre- 
tation to explain the acts and motives of others, and 
each applying the same rules to correct and justify his 
own acts and beliefs. This presents a very positive 
character to the sociological observer, who, not being 
aware of the emotional character of the process, as- 
sumes the presence of a conscious process of animism. 
But it is not animism in the sense that an idea, image, 
or notion of soul or mind is attributed by the savage 
to things; such a process is still to be developed. 
Let us then call this stage "affective or emotional 
animism."^ 

10. Finally, third, there is the full process of anim- 
ism proper, arising with the development of the dual- 
isms of person and thing and mind and body, and 
made possible only by these dualisms. These distinc- 
tions arise through the differentiation of experience 
into logical classes, which replace the emotional and 
affective classes of the earlier period. When this is 
accomplished, or is in the way of accomplishment, all 
sorts of ambiguities and compromises arise. The case 
of animism is that in which the new event is interpreted 
in terms of a conscious attribution of life or mind. It 
is no longer simply a spontaneous or ejective apprehen- 
sion of the thing in emotional terms, a first-hand 
construction of the thing as living or personal; it is 

' We find this in turn realised in the history of culture in the early 
pseudo-scientific interpretations of things which preceded true science. 
Astrology, alchemy, sooth-saying, magic, witchcraft — all sorts of 
" psychosophy , " in short, to use a term of Dessoir's — are in this 
sense animistic: they assume the presence of occult, mystic, quasi- 
mental and vital forces. See Dessoir, Umriss einer Geschichte der 
Psychology, and the present writer, History of Psychology, vol. i., chap. ii. 



78 Genetic Interpretation 

rather a more or less reflective interpretation of it, 
following upon the apprehension of its positive marks 
or characters. This we may well call "reflective 
animism." 

11. It has been said of certain of the "animists" 
that they make of the savage a philosopher. Primitive 
man is depicted as having an enquiring turn of mind, 
wishing to account for things, and asking for their 
causes; this leads him to the "hypothesis" that minds 
or souls lie back of the appearances of nature and 
"animate" lifeless objects. 

This representation is true of the developed form of 
animism, the full process which takes place when the 
mind is sufficiently advanced in its cognitions and 
logical distinctions to begin the life of enquiry — to 
substitute curiosity for emotional interest. But the 
distinction of types of animistic process as made above 
aids us by way of suggesting a twofold elimination. 

12. Recent criticism of the theory of animism makes 
it clear that reflective animism, supposing a process of 
conscious and logical animation, is not the true inter- 
pretation of primitive thought. The mass of the primi- 
tive man's apprehensions and interests are not personal 
and logical, but social and prelogical. He does not 
achieve, much less consciously make use of, the dualism 
of mind and body. He does not seek for causes in a 
speculative or purely explanatory sense. His interest, 
on the contrary, is in estimating the mysterious 
personal or occult powers of the new event or thing, 
and in adapting his life to them. His procedure, in- 
stead of magnifying and extending the discriminations 
of knowledge, passes them over without let or scruple, 
to arrive at the gain or loss their presence entails. His 
attitude is that of the interested participator, rather 



Racial Interpretation : Its Character 79 

than that of the disinterested spectator, of the course 
of nature. 

We may therefore exclude the theory which assumes 
a process of conscious or reflective animation in primi- 
tive interpretation. 

13. But it is as clear that we have before us, in 
the phenomena of primitive thought, something more 
than the mere chaos of unclassified experiences called 
above "projective" recognised by a second theory. In 
the interpretations of primitive man events are not 
by any means chaotic and lawless. He has his class 
distinctions drawn in lines of extraordinary precision 
and universality. To be sure it is not the lines of a 
logical classification; but still it is so definite that it 
requires of the youth a discipline of long duration, 
extreme privation, and lasting devotion to penetrate 
its intricacies and make ready for its requirements. 
The taboos, the rites of the chase, of marriage, of ini- 
tiation, of forecasting, of augury in general — to cite 
only the well-known instances — represent the consti- 
tution of vested rites and liberties. Nothing could be 
further removed from disorganisation or mere disorder, 
whatever its superficial appearance. 

Accordingly, we must disallow the "projective" 
theory : primitive life represents the organisation of a set 
of social and personal interests, its animism is an aspect 
of this positive organisation, not a sign of incoherence 
and confusion, or of the lawlessness of caprice. 

14. It becomes plain, then, in view of this process 
of elimination, that the animism of primitive life is 
that of the affective type.^ Its classifications are due 
to emotional interest, in its social rather than its indi- 
vidual form. We have seen that the body of collective 

^ The second of the staa;es described above. 



8o Genetic Interpretation 

"representation" is not at first strictly speaking repre- 
sentative; it is affective and conative. The processes 
by which in many cases it takes on representative form 
are those of a conventional and symbolic sort, by which 
the values of emotion and practice are socially fixed 
and made available in the life and tradition of the 
group. The totem, ^ the flag, the religious relic, the 
historical locality, stand for a lively and persistent 
collective meaning otherwise diffuse, intangible and 
unavailable to society. 

15. The animism of the primitive man's interpre- 
tation of nature is indeed not one of ideas and thoughts, 
but one of emotion and practice: not one due to intel- 
lectual intercourse, to discussion and interchange of 
thoughts, opinions and proofs; but one due to the 
presence in individuals of emotional states which are 
socially organised by imitation, contagion, and ejection, 
and fixed by representative symbols. 

The fact that in society there is a mass of established 
customs, rites, and habits which the individual natu- 
rally absorbs and observes — this sets the trend of his 
respect^ and reverence, his disposition and practice, in 
social and conventional lines. His rational acceptance 
and belief follow after. He learns both what pertains 
in general to his companions and himself, and what 
pertains especially to each ; what his status is, and what 
the rights, duties, and sanctions are that attach to it. 
All this becomes not merely "second-nature" to him, 
as we ordinarily understand that term — meaning 
acquired habit, over and above the natural formation 

' This process, whereby the "emblem" or symbol comes to stand for 
community of emotional interest and social value is admirably brought 
out by Durkheim, apropos of the totem {La Vie religieuse, pp. 329 ff.)- 

»M. Durkheim {loc. cit., pp. 304 ff.) adopts the word "respect" as I 
have, independently, for the believer's reHgious attitude. 



Racial Interpretation : Its Character 8i 

of character — but first-nature, part of his very self, 
which is a determination of the social reality in indi- 
vidual form. ^ The social and emotional apprehension 
of things and events is original and fundamental; 
genetically speaking, it is prelogical. 

1 6. The role attaching to the factor of ejection 
appears especially in the phenomena of animation. 
For the primitive observer both things and persons, 
animate and inanimate objects alike, have a selective 
and teleological meaning: things are intermediaries, 
agents, instruments of good or ill, of fate or fortime, 
or they are ends, beings to be propitiated, avoided, 
welcomed, appealed to, defended. In both cases they 
are values. 

As such they can not be merely neutral things; they 
are always charged with forces and powers understood 
in analogy with those found in social agencies and in 
individuals. They are included in the interests that 
determine the preferences, dispositions, regulations, of 
society, and the loves, hates, fears, and revenges, which 
the individual feels in himself and finds stirring in 
his fellows. All this fund of meaning, semi-personal but 
social, quasi- subjective but of external authority, at- 
taches to the things of nature as read ejectively by the in- 
dividual. Things are centres of the feelings and motives 
he finds in himself; they are social fellows; like him 
they have interests, which must be given satisfaction. ^ 

' I have suggested {History of Psychology, vol. i., London ed., p. 205), 
that if physical birth be placed at the beginning of the independent life of 
the child, that is, after the formative uterine influences have done 
their work, then personal mental birth should be placed, not at physical 
birth, but at the time when the individual becomes mentally a self or 
person, relatively independent of formative social influences. 

^ In the totemic systems, all the things of nature are divided up among 
the different totem-groups. Every tree, rock, brook, participates in 
one clan-life or another. 
6 



82 Genetic Interpretation 

This gives in large part the colouring of mysticism 
of which we hear so much in the discussions of primitive 
thought and belief. By mysticism is meant, in this 
connection, just the absence of logical processes and 
principles, and the substitution for them of emotional 
and active attitudes and classes. There is more than 
this in primitive mysticism, as we are to see below; but 
this is the beginning of it. 

17. But in this remarkable flowering of the emo- 
tional motives in the organisation of primitive social 
interests, the cognitive as such is not entirely lost. It 
is snubbed and kept under; but in many cases, not 
merely is there an attempt to give a reason, an account 
of the primitive rite or belief, but this account is often 
itself woven into the tribal tradition, and accepted as 
part of the intent of the collective meaning. Anthro- 
pologists have often mentioned this apparent need of 
primitive man to give some sort of rational, though 
fanciful, account of what he accepts, some reason 
"why." It takes generally the form of imaginative 
narrative. An association of an animal with a man in 
a dream, an event of a certain character following upon 
another, a remarkable victory won in consequence of 
the observance of a rite, a rival put to flight by a friendly 
animal, such incidents get all the force of confirmations 
of legend and justification of faith. The intellectual 
then follows on and gives support to the affective, a 
phenomenon by no means absent from more civilised 
thought. That this is the true order of the motives 
follows from the fact that any number of similar facts 
or occurrences that do not support the emotional belief 
are entirely overlooked or actually discredited. As 
with the mind-readers of to-day, any number of con- 
trary or negative instances do not impair belief, while 



Racial Interpretation : Its Character 83 

a single favourable instance is cited as sufficient to 
support and justify it. When the traveller asks why 
the charm failed to work, or why the friendly animal 
did not come to the rescue, a purely accidental or per- 
sonal reason is given for the exception to the rule. 
The animal was asleep, the god failed for the moment 
to recognise his friend, the moons were not observed. 
At any rate this serves to feed the dawning impulse 
to know. It also serves the end of securing objectivity 
and neutrality over against the mysticism of social 
participation and interest. 

18. It is, therefore, by the intervention of the 
imagination that the reason gets a chance along with 
emotion and practice. It is analogous to that function 
of the schematising imagination in the individual by 
which he likewise interprets things and tries to explain 
them. In the racial movement it produces folk-lore 
and myth, quasi-reasonable accounts of things. These 
in turn take on social form, becoming stereotyped and 
traditionalised. 

This constitutes, indeed, an essential step toward 
the logical mode of interpretation, since it supplies a 
fund of imaginative material which in time becomes 
matter of reflection. It is revised by the thinker who 
is able enough and bold enough to criticise it. The 
period from Hesiod to Homer is prehminary to the 
period from Homer to Socrates. In the child, there is 
the period of fairy-tale and epic romance, preceding 
that of prying curiosity and relative independence of 
judgment. 

§5. The rise of Mediate or Logical Interpretation 

19. On the whole, then, we have, in the progress of 
early racial interpretation, a picture whose outline is 



84 Genetic Interpretation 

familiar to us in the case of the individual. Two modes 
of apprehension, characterised as mediate and imme- 
diate are in evidence. The immediate mode is that of 
early projective knowledge: it is mystical, emotional, 
vaguely animistic, prelogical, holding sway from the 
start, but gradually yielding to the other mode which 
is truly cognitive. This latter takes on the forms 
proper to logical process, valuing objectivity and the re- 
lated fact or truth, in opposition to social conservatism 
and the interested pursuit of collective ends. The 
cognitive interest aims at organising knowledge in an 
objective system of things, to which images or ideas 
become instruments or means of approach. Objects 
or things are mediated by ideas. 

The transition to this latter mode is affected by the 
imagination, in its role of assumption, schematism, 
and heroic dramatisation. The immediate seeks to 
justify itself by the resort to objective and mythical 
pictures, thus adopting the weapons of representation. 
In this sense, the realm of social interests and values, 
like that of individual ends at the same stage of develop- 
ment, becomes intellectualised, and in so far satisfying 
to the reason as well as gratifying to the emotions. 

This is the earliest form of the inquiry into the nature 
of things, before reflection is fully developed. It is 
the justification of beliefs already formed in the pursuit 
of other interests. But once introduced, it is the be- 
ginning of the mediation which goes on to be general 
to reflection, when both ends and facts are judged 
through the medium of ideas. Immediate and col- 
lective apprehension thus gives way all along the line, 
in favour of direct observation and logical proof. ^ 

' See the further treatment of this transition in chap, viii., § i, 
below. 



Racial Interpretation : Its Character 85 

There is, however, another fact of early social life 
in which the motives of collective conservatism show 
a remarkable organisation — an organisation so unique, 
so persistent, so complex, that its explanation serves 
as a sort of testing of theories of primitive interpreta- 
tion. I mean, of course, Religion. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE RELIGIOUS INTERPRETATION 

§7. The Religious Interest 

I. It accords with the method of our previous dis- 
cussions to take up the psychological aspects of 
religion under the heading of "religious interest." 
By the term interest we mean to designate the larger 
mental dispositions in which the motives of experience 
and life organise themselves, in certain special direc- 
tions, and terminate upon certain special classes of 
objects: the esthetic interest terminating in art, the 
theoretical interest in truth, the practical interest in 
conduct and practical affairs. The inner organisation 
or interest, on the one hand, stands over against the 
objective content, on the other hand, to which the 
interest gives form and intelligibility. 

Considering religion as being in this sense one of the 
great interests of mankind, found at all stages of racial 
culture, and everywhere in individual practice, the 
aspects under which it may be discussed — and is cur- 
rently discussed — may be distinguished for convenience 
as follows: (i) The religious experience; (2) the reli- 
gious object and its meaning; (3) the development of 
religious meaning: its logic; (4) the social character of 
religion; (5) the sort of reality that religion discloses. 

86 



The Religious Interpretation 87 

These topics are treated in the paragraphs that follow. ^ 
The unifying thread throughout will be seen to be the 
genetic point of view by which the topic is made part 
of the whole of our work. 

§2. The Religious Experience 

2. The religious interest is universally admitted 
to be one that is, so to speak, ''pointed outward"; 
it always terminates upon an object found by it to be 
holy, sacred, divine. Apart from this object, the pre- 
sence of which it assumes, the interest as such has 
distinct emotional and conative qualities not found in 
the individual's attitude toward any other sort of 
conscious object. These qualities persist as substan- 
tially the same throughout all the changes that the 
religious object undergoes — from totem to Zeus, let 
us say — representing an attitude v/hich is, for con- 
sciousness itself, sui generis. There is a true religious 
disposition, on the part of the devotee, believer, or 
worshipper. 

This response in the life of interest is present wher- 
ever there is the suggestion of " sacredness " ; it is 
absent when the sacred is absent. The secular does 
not excite it; and the profane excites an opposing atti- 
tude of repulsion and avoidance toward that which 
produces a violation, injury, or profanation of the 
sacred. Just what the "sacredness" means will con- 

' Much of the chapter has already appeared in the Sociological Review, 
Oct., 1913. Certain paragraphs reproduce in somewhat different form 
matter published from time to time in recent years in more special 
publications, i. e., following the numbers of the headings given in the 
text: on (i). Social and Ethical Interpretations (ist ed., 1897); on (2) and 
(3), Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, art. "Religion (Psychology 
of)"; on (4), Proc. Fourth Internal. Congress of the History of Religion, 
Oxford, 1904, and Darwin and the Humanities, chap. vi. 



88 Genetic Interpretation 

cern us later on, in the discussion of the character of 
the sacred object itself.^ 

3. The components of this interest or disposition — 
the emotional and active factors which enter into it — 
are described by different terms which, however, on the 
whole, serve to bring out a fair agreement among 
the writers who use them. The early analysis of 
Schleiermacher, reducing the emotional part of the 
religious experience to feelings of "dependence" and 
feelings of "awe" or reverence, has stood as substan- 
tially correct despite various verbal substitutions in 
the description. Paulsen, seeking a more psychological 
term, substitutes "trust" for dependence; while theo- 
logical writers, emphasising the intellectual, use "faith." 
Later sociological writers, seeing the matter more 
objectively, go back to the word "dependence." Like- 
wise for "awe," different writers use different terms — 
reverence, fear, sense of mystery, respect, etc. But 
apart from these differences of verbal rendering, we 
may say that whatever the object may be toward which 
the religious attitude is taken up, there is the recogni- 
tion in this object of a presence or force worthy of respect 
and capable of giving aid: it is ^'auguste et bienfaisante.''^ 

' E. Durkheim {La Vie religieuse, 1912) makes the distinction between 
sacred (sacre) and secular (profane) the fundamental one, but does not 
distinguish, so far as I can find, the secular from the properly profane; 
he seems, however, under the word profane, to include the secular 
(as in the application of the term to "matter," loc. cit., p. 613). The 
profane, properly speaking, is by no means the same thing as the 
secular or non-religious. 

* Durkheim, loc. cit., p. 303. I cite in preference this new work of 
M. Durkheim, not only because it is recent and of high authority, but 
also because it is a work of detailed inductive research and of interpreta- 
tion based upon facts (drawn from the totemic beliefs and practices of 
the Central Australian tribes). The full title is Les Formes elementaires 
de la Vie religieuse: le Systeme Totemique en Australie. 



The Religious Interpretation 89 

4. In the individual, the reHgious interest always 
shows these two great aspects; and they both develop 
noticeably with the development of the consciousness 
of personality, that is with the apprehension of "self" 
and the correlative apprehension of other persons. 
I have elsewhere traced out this development in detail. ^ 
It preserves throughout — from the child's early phys- 
ical dependence and appeal for help, to the high re- 
flective sentiments of faith and praise for moral favours 
— its character as directed towards an object that is 
separate from the personal self, but in intimate physical 
and moral relation to it, and claiming a very special 
respect. ^ 

As thus described, the religious interest, considered 
as a mass of organised human motives, reveals char- 
acters which mark it as being at once personal and 
social. Both the dependence and the respect which its 
object inspires are of the sort found peculiarly in social 
relationships : they are the same in kind as those directed 
toward persons. Religious dependence is not merely 
subjection to law, although its sanctions are external 
to the individual. Only in its crudest form, where it 
is a question whether, either in the child or in the 
savage, it should still be called religious, does the sense 
of dependence become mere fear, or religious worship 
mere recognition of authority or force. ^ Similarly, 
the feeling of respect or reverence differs from the 
sentiment of the sublime in nature, on the one hand, 
and from respect for moral law, on the other hand. 

^ Social and Ethical Interpretations, 4th ed., chap, viii., § 5. 

^ Spoken of more fully below. 

3 British writers generally, notably Tylor {Primitive Culture) and 
Frazer {The Golden Bough, and Totemism and Exogamy) refuse to admit 
that these sentiments are religious. 



90 Genetic Interpretation 

Moreover, the cult, in which these feelings take on 
active form, centres about a presence that sees, hears, 
sympathises, blames, punishes — that enters, in short, 
into personal relations with the worshipper. Its ele- 
ments are prayer, praise, thanksgiving, and sacrificial, 
intercessory, and other rites. 

In the system of activities, and in the institutions 
in which these activities are performed and developed 
by many persons in common, religion shows again its 
unique character. It is true that emotion and interest 
hav^e generally their appropriate active channels of 
expression, either native or acquired; but in religious 
rites and observances, we find not a mere direct and, 
so to put it, "causal" way of reacting upon the world 
— a means of accomplishing an end directly, such 
as throwing a stone to hit a bird — but an indirect, 
personal way, acting by means of suggestion, in- 
formation, persuasion, confession — all the means by 
which one person is commonly approached by another. 
It makes use of all the refinements of the personal 
rapport, from simple spontaneous suggestion, on the 
part of the savage, to the most refined and sophis- 
ticated logical subtleties, on the part of the learned 
theologian. 

5. It is extraordinary, moreover, that in religion, 
both the privacy of our inner experiences of value, 
and the publicity of social sanction and authority, 
seem to be at their highest, although, perhaps, at differ- 
ent periods and with different adjustments of the 
motives involved. In the early prelogical religious 
interest of primitive man, the externality of the sanc- 
tion is brutally evident; the religious authority does 
not differ much from those other modes of social 
constraint with which it is bound up, and to which 



The Religious Interpretation 91 

in many instances in itself appears to give rise. 
Here the element of privacy in the experience — the 
sense that the relation to God is special and per- 
sonal to oneself — is at its lowest. Religion of this 
grade has been called "objective." Its rites, pro- 
hibitions, benefits, values, are socially regulated, 
publicly measured, and enjoyed by many persons in 
common. 

6. On the other hand, religious experience goes on 
to become "subjective." The "religious conscious- 
ness" becomes the arbiter and judge in matters of 
belief and practice. The inter-subjective meaning 
of religion becomes that of a direct relation between 
the man and his god; and it loses something of 
the generalised or syntelic character so conspicuous 
in primitive religious practices. In the subjective 
religion of the logical consciousness, the religious 
allies itself with the ethical and in some measure 
absorbs its universal and synnomic force. But with 
it all, the religious relation becomes more individual 
and less collective. The flat "do not" of the savages' 
"taboo," and the equally arbitrary "do this" of the 
Ten Commandments, yield to the sympathetic "do 
this in remembrance of me," of personal union and 
communion. ^ 

' It would seem to be at the two extremes of "objectivism" and "sub- 
jectivism" that those explosive and convulsive manifestations occur that 
give interesting variety to religious experience. The frenzy of the 
primitive religious dance is due to the public and collective suggestion 
and stimulation; as is also the fervour of the religious revival meeting. 
At the other extreme, the states of trance, ecstasy, prophetic mania, etc., 
in individuals, are instances of inner exaltation in which the communion 
with the deity and union with him lead to loss of personal identity and 
to pathological nervous manifestations. These " variations," treated in- 
terestingly by James {The Varieties of Religious Experience), are the 
accidents, so to speak, of religion. 



92 Genetic Interpretation 

§ J. The Religious Object: its Personal Meaning 

7. There are two senses in which the term "object " 
may be employed in connection with an interest or 
disposition^: it may mean either, on the one hand, the 
mere external thing, together with the symbols, ideas, 
etc., which describe or represent this thing; or, on the 
other hand, a further significance, meaning, or intent 
attaching to the thing, something symbolised or sug- 
gested. The distinction is a familiar one. Our inter- 
ests always pour themselves, so to speak, over and 
around their objects and shape them into values, goods, 
or ends. The mere thing becomes a symbol or emblem 
of the larger object of interest; the "thing of fact" 
suggests and symbolises the "thing of desire" or will. 

So far as the mere thing set up in the religious con- 
sciousness is concerned — the mere external symbol or 
emblem — it may be anything whatever. Actually it 
shows extraordinary variety in the different religions. 
A fetish, a totem, a churinga, a charm, a relic, a locality, 
a sound, an eclipse, an idol, a picture, things animate 
and things inanimate, may and do serve as objects of 
religious or quasi- religious veneration. It is clear, 
then, that it is not a particular thing as such, but some 
further value the thing possesses, that stirs the religious 

' There are, in fact, no less than four different senses in which the 
terms "object" and "objective" have been used in this connection, and 
their distinction from one another is essential: (i) the mere objective 
thing set up before the worshipper; this may be properly designated the 
religious "symbol "or "emblem;" (2) the entire objective meaning or 
presence, the spirit, force, or god, which the emblem stands for or sym- 
bolises; this is, properly speaking, the "religious object"; (3) the cause, 
social, psychological, or other, which produces the religious experience 
in the devotee; this may be called the "cause"; and (4) the real exist- 
ence or reality which religion may be held to disclose, discover, or reveal: 
the "religious reality." 



The Religious Interpretation 93 

interest. The thing becomes a signal, sign, symbol, 
emblem, of the further signification in which this value 
resides. 

8. The thing suggests the religious meaning; and 
the question arises, what is the religious meaning 
suggested? It is a meaning, we may say at the outset, 
appropriate to the sentiments which the object excites 
— dependence and respect, both coloured in conscious- 
ness with a personal quality. The object appropriate 
to these sentiments must be either a person or something 
that suggests personality so directly that a relation 
is established to which that of person to person appears 
to be the only available analogy. Let us look a little 
more closely at these two cases. 

9. (i) The first is the case in which the religious ob- 
ject is a god, a deity, explicitly described as personal. 
In developed religions the gods are personal beings. 

All the great religions of the world have personal 
gods.^ This was announced in Zenophanes' famous 
saying that all men's gods were in form like themselves. 
The limiting case, on one side, would seem to be found 
in the speculative and hyper-logical systems in which 
concrete personality is, for one reason or another, left 
behind or denied. In the systems of speculative 
pantheism and high reflective mysticism personality 
no longer appears. These, however, can not make 
good the claim to be religious, since the sentiments 
they excite are no longer pure, and the active rites of 
religious practice become altogether irrelevant. One 
does not expect personal consideration from the "uni- 
versal order," nor does one worship "pure reason" or 

^ Buddhism (cited by Durkheim as an exception to this statement) 
was a religion after its founder was deified; whether it was a religion 
before that seems to involve just the point at issue. 



94 Genetic Interpretation 

"new thought." In passing from the rehgious state 
of mind to the theoretical and speculative, something 
is changed, the religious shading is lost. 

10. (2) At the other extreme, there is another limiting 
case: the case of a stage of culture so primitive that 
religion, like other institutions, is reduced to its lowest 
terms. The religious interest is focused directly 
upon a physical thing, which seems to exhale no mean- 
ing beyond itself, no suggestion of personality. To 
this we return below; but here we may remark that 
the relation of person to person remains the only avail- 
able analogy for the interpretation of the actual facts 
reported by the anthropologists. This appears both 
from certain positive considerations and from the 
negative one that no other hypothesis has the same 
grounding in facts. 

The attempts to define religion in terms that exclude 
the personality of the object do so by citing the extreme 
cases mentioned. On the one hand, the object becomes 
an abstract principle. The gods of theistic religions 
become temporary, incomplete, or secondary embodi- 
ments of this principle, as in the "absolute religion" 
of the Hegelian metaphysics, or the impersonal force 
of the Stoic and Positivist theories. Religion is no 
longer a matter of religious experience; it becomes a 
category of absolute being, an effect of cosmic laws, or 
a postulate of social utility. ^ 

11. The other extreme case, that of the primitive 
cult, is cited principally by sociological writers, who 
in their search for the root-motive or simplest form of 

' Of course a metaphysical theory of religion is legitimate in its place, 
but it can not take the place of a definition of religious experience. 
Religion as cause or effect, as category or postulate, is not the religion 
of the devout state of mind. That which causes religious fervour may 
not be at all that towards which this fervour is directed. 



The Religious Interpretation 95 

religion, seek for some character of sufficient generality 
to include impersonal as well as personal objects in the 
religious interest. A typical attempt of the kind is 
that which makes the mark of religion the "sacredness" 
by which the primitive man distinguishes the religious 
objects from other things: sacred things and events 
are religious, secular things and events are not so; 
there is a fundamental cleft between the secular and 
the sacred, extending through the whole of nature.^ 
Both sociology and psychology, one citing anthropologi- 
cal facts and the other the psychological manifestations 
of religious interest, demand an account of sacredness. 

If we are to escape the mere tautology of saying 
that sacred things are religious because religious things 
are sacred, we must give some actual and distinctive 
content to the concept of the sacred. The task of both 
these sciences alike is to discover this distinctive 
content or meaning. Given the same material thing, 
why is it sacred in some circumstances and in other 
circumstances secular or profane? 

The task assumed by the advocates of the theory 
just cited is to show that in some cases sacred things 
do not have the suggestion of personality, although in 
such cases these things are the object of a veneration 
or respect truly religious. The latter part of the theory 
is essential, since even though lacking personality, 

^ This theory, announced some time ago by M. Durkheim ("De la 
Definition du phenomene religieux, " Annee Sociologique, ii., 1897), is 
developed in his work La Vie religieuse. In order to sharpen the issue, 
we may observe that, in English usage at least, sacred is a term of the 
widest import: all things subject to any degree of religious respect are 
"sacred" (such as the vessels of the altar), while the gods themselves 
are not only sacred but "divine, " and persons (especially priests, saints, 
etc.) and places most intimately associated with the gods or with relig- 
ious ceremonial, are "holy. " The sacred, therefore, is the most extended 
but the least significant, of the three terms. 



96 Genetic Interpretation 

such things may prove to be merely the symbols or 
emblems of a further significance in which the sugges- 
tion of personality does enter. 

12. It is just this latter requirement, the second 
part of the task, on which this theory suffers shipwreck. 
It has no difficulty in showing that in primitive religions, 
of the totemic grade, for example, objects in themselves 
quite impersonal — the thuringa, the graphic sign, the 
external thing bearing the totemic name, etc. — are 
held to be sacred. But it then fails to prove the further 
point requisite to the definition: the point that the 
entire meaning upon which the religious interest ter- 
minates is devoid of personal suggestion or intent. 
Either it fails to subject to an adequate psychological 
analysis the notion of personality at this stage of culture, 
or it fails to state positively what the actual imper- 
sonal meaning of religious sacredness is. In both of 
these directions an adequate analysis serves, in my 
opinion, to show that the religious object, even in 
totemism, is not without the marks of animation or 
life, and that it is, in a crude sense but still positively, 
quasi-personal for the consciousness of the devotee himself. 

13. As to the meaning of the totem — it symbolises 
the clan, as all authorities agree. The important 
members of the clan, the true members, are persons. 
After the persons of the clan, come particular animals 
(the totemic animal or plant itself being a species, not 
a particular one or more), and finally the things found 
in the totemic area. The true reality of which the 
totem is the emblem (akin, in the words of Durkheim, 
to the flag in civilised countries) is the human or, at 
most, a human-animal group. ^ Now in what sense 

^ In which (Durkheim, loc. ciL, p, 366) mythical ancestral personages 
also figure. 



The Religious Interpretation 97 

can this group, as distinct from its individual members, 
be called impersonal? Is it true that, in becoming the 
symbol or emblem of a group, the sign, itself generally 
a living species, acquires a meaning from which the 
essential attributes of the members of the group are 
omitted? If the savage, who probably does not think 
in terms of logical classes, but of affective and social 
groupings, were asked what the totem was, he would 
point no doubt to individual persons or animals that 
shared the totemic name and "participated" in its 
meaning. ^ 

No doubt the constraint exercised upon the primitive 
man by society is not attributed by him to single mem- 
bers of the clan; but in locating it in the totem, does 
he give it an altogether impersonal representation? 
Rather we should agree with Durkheim in ascribing 
to the totem a generalised vital force. If so, the con- 
clusion seems to follow that it suggests the animate, 
as an essential part of its meaning, and that it is there- 
fore — as we are to show — in so far crudely personal. 
That is to say, it can not be properly described as 
"impersonal."^ 

14. It remains to make good the statement that the 
theory in question, which is typical in this respect of 
the theories of primitive religion hitherto in vogue, 

' It would be difficult to maintain that, even to us with our logical 
notions, the concrete flag floating before us is entirely impersonal in its 
meaning. As a social emblem, it stimulates just those collective emo- 
tional dispositions that lie at the root of our sense of personality. The 
flag-meaning, apart from the mere number of flags denoted, is an affec- 
tive and social, not a logical class. 

' In the article cited, Sociological Review, Oct., 1913, further criticism 
is made of M. Durkheim's position. In a personal note to the writer 
commenting on that article, M. Durkheim says that by "impersonal" 
he simply means "collective." This is not, however, the meaning 
usually given to the term. 
7 



98 Genetic Interpretation 

fails to give thorough analysis to the meaning of per- 
sonality.^ Without this any theory is incompetent 
to decide whether or not a given symbol or emblem, 
such as the totem, possesses the meaning of personality. " 

15. A true statement of religious animism would 
recognise a development of the meaning of the soul- 
principle which the savage ascribes to things, from 
very crude beginnings. This principle passes from 
mere vital attributes up to the substantive and spiritual 
soul, as has been shown in detail above. ^ Analogy 
drawn from the present-day genetic psychology of 
self-consciousness not only allows but requires this. 
It would be impossible for the savage, whose repre- 
sentation is prelogical and whose interest is affective 
and collective, to isolate a "soul," as we understand 
the term, in the sense of something individual and 
spiritual, in himself or in anything else. He has no 
such "idea," no "notion" of the kind. But this fact 
does not refute the animistic interpretation, nor require 
us to resort to a " pre-animistic " stage of religion. It 
does not even justify one in calling the totemic system 
non-animistic, whether or not we consider it religious. 

For while the savage has no idea of soul as some- 
thing different in nature from body, he still has a 
feeling, an interest, a collective intent which, so far as 

' It is a current criticism of the British "animistic" school that their 
psychology is out of date and untrue. They are for the most part 
associationists, who find in the sense of personality a "notion" of the 
self, an "idea," having always the same meaning (see L^vy-Bruhl, loc. 
cit., and the writer's History of Psychology, vol. i., London ed., p. 16). 

* Writers of the French school in turn deliberately court this criticism 
in resorting avowedly and almost exclusively to the objective or socio- 
logical point of view, and in showing a certain inhospitality to the 
psychological. See the citations made in the article mentioned {Socio- 
logical Review, Oct., 1913, p. 9). 

3 Chap, v., § 4. 



The Religious Interpretation 99 

it is developed, is the way he apprehends the mental 
and animate, even though he may not "represent" it 
at all clearly,^ He probably has no notion or idea of 
"inanimate" in contrast with animate, much less of 
body versus spirit, although, in his practical adapta- 
tions and social rites, he makes the actual discrimina- 
tion of living and not living. 

16. The principal characteristics of the primitive 
man's view of things are such as to justify the appli- 
cation of the term "affective animism."'' There is a 
recognition of things, animals, persons, as possessed 
of a certain forcefulness, a dynamic quality akin to 
animation. It would not do to say that things are 
taken to be "living merely," for " living-merely " is 
too high and abstract a notion. It supposes the con- 
trasted idea or meaning of something more than mere 
life, a sort of spiritual power. But we may say that 
to the savage the living shows the presence of those 
powers which become later on, in the more mature 
thinker's reflection, the signs of the spiritual. To the 
primitive man, the one dynamic centre stands for all 
the confused mass of meanings which are still to be 
differentiated into the categories of inanimate,^ living, 
and spiritual. But if the researches of anthropologists 
should reveal a culture still more simple — one quite 
a-dualistic and projective, in which experience is near 
the grade found in the perceptual intelligence and 

' He represents it generally as a small material body, or a second more 
refined physical shape, or as something resident on the breath — all nat- 
ural hypotheses taken up in the early stages of Greek speculation. 

' The second of the stages described above, as has been said. 

3 The case of the inanimate first clearly distinguished by the savage — • 
under the totemic regime — is probably the dead body, just after death. 
He thinks the sotil has departed from it, leaving it in this condition. 
It is different from the things of nature, for they still retain their mystic 
forces, while the dead body has lost them. 



100 Genetic Interpretation 

instinctive action of the higher animals — I think we 
should still have to recognise a strain of animistic 
meaning running through it: an animism of the first 
or "spontaneous" sort. For certain of the animals, 
though lacking the distinctions of human thought, 
still appear to apprehend the dynamic quality of nature, 
and to look upon movement and change as being the 
source of the same type of experiences as that which 
they derive from man and their fellow-animals. 

To the child, also, even the most original panorama of 
the external, presented to the gaze of the mind, would 
not be a flat motionless sheet; but a scene of change, 
explosion, colour, vitality. And in it, moreover, by the 
very conditions of its perception, the vague lines of 
differentiation into parts would appear, which the 
dawning instincts, appetites, and interests would 
rapidly produce. It would be like the segmenting egg, 
in which the lines of cleavage, division, and partition, 
prophetic of the coming development, are just begin- 
ning to show themselves. The Anlagen, to pursue the 
biological figure, are present: the distinctions of life, 
mind, and things in their embryonic form. This would 
appear to the outside observer, to whom the mature 
distinctions were clear, as a confused and mystical mode 
of animation. 

17. The theory, therefore, that denies all suggestion 
of personality to early religious objects, the totemic 
in particular, fails at two essential points. It recog- 
nises the symbolic or emblematic character of the mere 
thing, the totem or idol^; but in admitting that the 

' The mere superficial fact of "sacredness" attaching to a thing means 
nothing. The sacredness of the inanimate thing is reflected, not original. 
It is sacred because it symbolises a meaning beyond itself — vitality, 
personal force, God. The fountain of sacredness is to be found in that 
which is symboHsed. 



The Religious Interpretation loi 

religious meaning proper resides in the further sug- 
gestion of some sort of force or life, it allows an animistic 
interpretation. Further, the theory fails to show, by 
an analysis of the primitive man's representation and 
interest, that such an animistic apprehension is not a 
stage in the development of the animism of conscious 
personality. 

We are able to say with confidence, seeing the results 
of genetic psychology, that it is such a stage, a neces- 
sary stage. If as psychologists we were called upon to 
construct in advance the sort of world-view primitive 
man as we find him — prelogical, collective, mystical 
in his intuition — would entertain, it would be just 
this and nothing else. His gods could not be spiritual, 
individual, and intelligent agents; they could only be 
vaguely animistic, dynamic, collective, mystic pres- 
ences, satisfying to the crude quasi-personal interest 
by which they are apprehended. ^ 

§ 4. The Religious Object : its Ideal Meaning 

18. In the current treatment of the ethical and 
esthetic modes of experience, the characters attaching 
to ideals are much discussed. Both moral right and 
aesthetic perfection are ideals; and the religious object 
shares the ideal quality with the moral and the aesthetic. 

What this means will appear on a closer examination 
of the object set up for worship in this or that reli- 
gious cult. As we have seen, the mere thing is not the 
object ; it is the symbol of the object. There is a further 
meaning, a signification beyond the mere symbol; and 
this signification is one determined, not by representa- 

' As I have said elsewhere, if the child, at a certain age, were asked 
the abstract questions the anthropologist puts to the savage, his replies 
would show the same puzzling confusion and incoherence. 



102 Genetic Interpretation 

tion or thought, but by emotional and active Interest. 
It is not an associated idea, or a system of ideas, but a 
worth, a further value imputed to the concrete object. 
The sacred thing is the centre of worthful experiences; 
the deity is well- or ill-disposed, capable of harm or 
benefit. All such unaccomplished, unfulfilled worths, 
presenting something to aim at, to live for, to desire, 
are ideals.' In this sense the religious object is an 
ideal. 

19. But more than this. The religious object is 
always, as we have seen, endowed with the attributes 
of life and personality, however vaguely. It is a more 
or less developed centre of inner life and spiritual force. 
If this be so, then its ideal character must be that 
attaching to such an object : it is an ideal of personality, 
of what the worshipper himself is, a self in some more 
or less adequate sense. In what sense, we may ask, 
and by what process, can a meaning of selfhood or 
personality take an ideal form? 

In the development of the ethical ideal in the indi- 
vidual this movement is seen in operation. ^ The growth 
of the individual self-consciousness proceeds by an or- 
ganisation of factors which are, so to speak, prospec- 
tive, forward-reaching, active. We have within us the 
actual self of habit, ready at any time for action, which 
finds, however, over against it a self of accommodation, 
learning, imitation, adaptation. A better self — more 

^ See Thought and Things, vol. iii., "Interest and Art," chap, v., §7; 
also vol. i., chap, xix, §8. This worth is embodied in the imagination, by 
which the object is schematically developed and its possibilities brought 
out. The ideal is not a model of perfection, brought into the mind from 
some outside source; nor is the process of idealisation a special and 
mysterious faculty or intuition; it is simply the imagination in its assum- 
ing, schematising, and experimental r61e, running ahead of knowledge. 

' Cf. the author's Social and Ethical Interpretations, 4th ed., chap. i. 



The Religious Interpretation 103 

adapted, better informed, more obedient, virtuous, 
just, generous, wise — hovers before our gaze, and serves 
as model, inspiration, imperative, and ideal. At the 
limit, this self is perfect, the all-good and the all-wise, 
the ideal Self. 

The religious ideal is of this character. But it is 
not the same as the ethical ideal; and the contrast 
between them is very instructive. 

20. The ethical ideal is felt to be ideal — that is, not 
actual. It is a norm set in the mind, a rule of ideal 
conduct imposed upon all persons, but not realised 
by any of them. We do not suppose our moral ideals 
to be actually fulfilled, except in God. This is to say 
that the personal ideal qiia moral, if it is to be realised, 
must become also the personal ideal qua religious.'^ 
It is, then, the religious ideal proper that is actually 
realised in God, not the merely moral ideal. Our moral 
nature postulates an ideal ethical value, but not an 
ideal ethical person. 

The same thing appears also from the point of view 
of duty. The moral ideal is one of duty as between 
persons. It is a rule of social intercourse as well as of 
personal perfection. It could be realised in practice 
only in a society of perfected beings, a Utopia, which 
does not exist. Such a society has been dreamt of 
and written of, but never seriously postulated as exist- 
ing, except in the realm in which the religious ideal is 
also imposed : the kingdom of God, the heaven of various 
religions, the state of perfection of religious mysticism. 
On the side of society, therefore, no less than on the 

' It is on the basis of this truth that the historical argument of Anselm 
for the existence of God can be reconstructed. Instead of an idea whose 
infinity stands in the way of the omission of actual existence from its 
object, as argued by Anselm, we have the postulate of the ideal self, 
whose integrity demands its existence. 



104 Genetic Interpretation 

side of the individual, the postulate of an actually 
existing ideal order of persons is not moral but religious. 

21. Despite these differences, however, the two 
ideals are closely related. Their common trait is 
equally fundamental to both: the relation of the per- 
sonal self to another self viewed in the light of ideal 
personality. In the ethical, both these selves are 
concrete, actual, social fellows, existing side by side; 
but the ideal of their relation does not exist save in 
their thought. In the religious, the second or "other" 
person, the deity, is one with the ideal, which is thus 
made actual, brought into human life, and symbolised 
concretely in the religious emblem that stands for God. 

Thus understood, certain positive marks attach to 
the religious ideal. 

(i) It is the fulfilment of the entire personality, not 
merely of this or that function or capacity of the self. 
The savage finds the power behind the movements of 
nature mysterious, awful, because he cannot anticipate 
or discount the resources or decisions of the Great 
Spirit. So the voice of Jehovah commands, "Take 
off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon 
thou standest is holy ground." The creeds of theology, 
which ring with terms of infinitude and juggle with 
synonyms of personality, are as inadequate to express 
the religious ideal, as are the groans of the terrified 
savage, or the genuflections of the awe-stricken pilgrim 
at the holy place. It is here that religious awe — a 
singular combination of fear, respect, and admiration — 
meets its object half-way. As perfect this object is 
admirable, as personal it commands respect, as power- 
ful it is to be feared. But all of these attitudes are 
coloured by the glamour of the ideal. It is not ordinary 
fear, but fear of one having endless power ; not ordinary 



The Religious Interpretation 105 

respect, but respect for the morally highest, the su- 
premely excellent; not ordinary admiration, but ac- 
quiescence in eternal wisdom and contemplation of 
divine beauty. These feelings are fused in one sen- 
timent, one interest, as in the object the attributes are 
fused in one ideal person, God. 

22. (2) In the religious interest, the social relation 
takes on a form analogous to that of superior and in- 
ferior in our daily life. The ideal of personality which 
we enforce upon ourselves as a moral ideal, we attribute 
to God as his by right of actual nature. Although he 
is one of the persons in the social relation, being divine 
he is ideal as well. ^ 

In presupposing the actual existence of its object, 
however, religious faith generates a relation of great 
import and real effect. God is an actual presence, 
like that of the child's superior — father, mother, elder 
brother, counsellor, friend — all designations realised 
in actual religious creeds. These are not mere figures 

^ Now that we have discussed the religious object, we are able to detect 
more clearly the elements of the rehgious emotion. Religious "awe" 
is complex: it contains /eor with admiration (I'effroi domine par T admira- 
tion, Leuba, in Revue Philosophique, October, 1913, p. 413). Mere 
respect too, even though personal, is not all, nor veneration (as due to 
excellence, age, experience, wisdom, etc.); it is admiring respect, aesthetic 
absorption and appreciation akin to the sense of the sublime. This is 
seen in the historical bond between art and religious technique. The 
intellectual emotions as such — curiosity, logical satisfaction, etc. — 
are very subordinate, especially in the primitive stages, where religion 
is prelogical and social. The savage's curiosity, so-called, in the pres- 
ence of the religious symbol, omen, or portent, is more of the nature of 
an alertness or attentiveness, to get the first sign of the will of the god, 
similar to that of a player for high stakes, who watches the turn of the 
dice. And the theoretical interest as such, prominent in systematic 
theology, is rather a reflection upon religion than a direct participation 
in it. The dogmatic development of theology does not in itself involve 
personal religion; in fact, this latter involves dropping the critical and 
logical attitude of mind. 



io6 Genetic Interpretation 

of speech, but aspects in which the actual presence is 
symboHsed to this beHever or that, in this emergency 
or that. Through this personal communion the indi- 
vidual finds his forces renewed, his courage revived, 
his emotions purged, his aspirations directed, his visions 
of beauty and good clarified. ^ 

23. The dependence felt in the religious conscious- 
ness is therefore of the nature of dependence upon a 
superior person. It extends to all sorts of aid or succour, 
physical, moral, intellectual. And the superior person 
is one to whom the relation is also important. The 
dependence is in a sense reciprocal. In primitive 
societies, man protects the totemic animal, as the totem 
protects the man. In religion everywhere the sacred 
places and objects are committed to the guardianship 
of the priests; and the sacred truths are defended and 
enforced by the prophets and law-givers. The gods 
are represented as jealous of their rights, gratified by 
praise, pleased with offerings, and given to pursuing 
their own interests or glory ^ through human agencies. 
This means that the significance of the relation is not 
unilateral, so to speak, one to which one member is 
indifferent. On the contrary, the deity of the tribe 
finds his life and interest in those of the tribe ; he pursues 
with unerring vengeance and direful penalties those 
who go out "after strange gods." He chooses a "pecu- 

' This is in contrast with the discouragement which comes from 
meditating upon unrealised ethical excellence and unperformed moral 
action. The religious ideal stimulates and inspires. It is no doubt this 
somewhat hidden motive in the whole that develops itself by making 
concrete the person of God in an incarnate form, as saviour, mediator, 
virgin mother, saint, etc. The need and the effect of the " Imitation of 
Christ" are very real; it means the absorption of the ideal by commun- 
ion with it. 

* As in the Westminster Confession of Faith. 



The Religious Interpretation 107 

liar people," who become the special instruments of his 
revelation as well as the special wards of his providence. 
They represent his interests. 

24. In the more reflective stages of religious develop- 
ment, this concrete anthropomorphism tends to dis- 
appear, just as it itself follows upon the cruder animism 
of the primitive cult. The ideal takes on more and 
more refined form. But it never becomes an "idea 
of the infinite," except in our logical rendering, nor a 
formula of final perfection, except in our theory. It 
remains a feeling forward, a prospective intent, a sort 
of drift or momentum in the actual organisation of 
interest, toward the fulfilment of the full promise of 
personality. Hence the inadequacy of all symbolism, 
as well as the futility of all logical statements, of the 
nature of God. His nature remains always personal; 
but the sense of the sort of person he is changes with 
the development of man. The human ideal is a re- 
statement always of the human fact. 

§5. The development of the Religious Meaning: its 

Logic 

Coming to ask as to the processes by which the 
religious interest develops, carrying the religious 
object along with it, we find certain striking com- 
plications. 

25. In considering the development of the cognitive 
function — its genetic logic — psychologists point out 
the familiar processes of memory, representation, con- 
version, generalisation, etc., through which a given 
content or object normally passes. And in consider- 
ing similarly the logic of emotion and interest, other 
processes are discovered more or less analogous to the 



io8 Genetic Interpretation 

former, but also having certain novel features.^ In 
the latter, affective generalisation, ejection, and ideal- 
isation, are the mental functions most in evidence; 
they take the place held in the development of know- 
ledge proper by the cognitive processes mentioned, 
which culminate in conception, judgment, and reasoning. 
26. Now in the religious life, we find a singular 
union of these two great modes of development within 
the mind, the logical and the teleological, as we have 
called them respectively. The logical erects classes 
and establishes facts and truths, by its methods of 
proof; the teleological issues in affective interests and 
defines ends and values. Now, in the religious life we 
find the object, God, looked upon as really existing, as 
if established by processes of knowledge, while, at the 
same time, it is determined by the religious interest as 
an ideal or end. Religion claims to present both a 
system of truth and a system of personal and social 
values. God is both fact and ideal; not merely in the 
common way of a value attaching to a fact or truth, as 
utility attaches to my inkstand, but in the peculiar 
way in which a meaning attaches to that which sym- 
bolises it. The ordinary attributed values are real 
only in so far as the things in which they inhere are 
real; when unrealised they are ideal, and not actual. 
But the meaning of the divine, the sacred, the holy, is 
not "attributed" to the object in this sense; on the 
contrary, the objective symbol or emblem is attributed 
or assigned to this meaning, to represent it vicariously. 
The ideal exists and gives a new sort of reality to the 
thing taken as symbol. 

' The latter, the affective logic, has not been fully worked out; the 
author's contribution to it is to be found in vol. iii., " Interest and Art," of 
Thought and Things (the logic of cognition being treated in vols. i. and ii.). 



The Religious Interpretation 109 

27. As to the logic of religious interest, we may say 
that it is that of interest generally. It seems to be 
at first collective, traditional, socially propagated; the 
single person being the mere channel of its expression, 
a locus at which the personal forces are moulded into 
shape as the vehicle and instrument of the social will. 
The gradual refinement of the religious interest proceeds 
with the growth of the individual self in competence 
and independence. But it is just in the religious 
interests of mankind that the traditional forms hold 
their own most conservatively. The social processes 
of imitation, contagion, ejection, constraint, dogmatic 
formulation of creed, all serve to increase the rigidity 
and solidarity of religious belief and practice. Myth 
and folk-lore are the antecedents of doctrine, mystic 
ceremonies precede the more reasonable rites of worship. 
A legitimate glamour is thrown over the whole by the 
elaboration of form in architecture, painting, and music, 
through which the motive of aesthetic admiration is 
developed. We see here, in short, all the processes of 
affective logic exemplified: the matter of the religious 
interest is affectively generalised in dispositions and 
modes of actions; it is ejectively converted from one 
mind to another and propagated through the established 
institutions; it is embodied in the highest aesthetic 
products of human art. The church presents the 
essential positive features of religion and morals, as 
well as their limitations. 

§ 6. The social Character of Religion 

28. The result of our inquiry, so far as we have now 
gone, is in striking accord with those of sociology and 
anthropology. The collective character of the religious 



no Genetic Interpretation 

interest, as embodied in all that goes to form a cult or 
church, is universally conceded. But the newer re- 
searches in primitive culture show further that social 
organisation itself, even in its most secular details, 
has been dominated by requirements and distinctions 
rooted in religion. ^ 

This fact has been utilised in different ways in theo- 
ries of religion. Comte indeed anticipated the point, 
by recognising a stage of "theology" in the general 
evolution of thought, a stage at which the religious 
point of view was adopted to explain the world generally. 
At this stage, man was still under the domination of 
the religious interest; his interpretation of things was 
theological. Only in later stages of the development 
of culture, the "metaphysical" and "scientific," was 
he to free himself. But not entirely, for in the last 
period, that of "positive" and scientific thought, the 
need of religion was to find its satisfaction in the concept 
of humanity, to which an altar was to be erected bear- 
ing the inscription, "Religion of Humanity." Man 
conserves the religious interest, therefore, but he con- 
tents himself with a very platonic friendship for God, 
taking on the form of a certain flattery of himself ! 

29. Another theory, starting out from the same 
social presupposition — that of the union, in early times, 
of the collective and religious interests — suggests in its 
conclusion a different alternative. Humanity out- 
grows religion, we are told, in becoming scientific and 
positivistic. Hence our seeming progress towards the 
"non-religion of the future."^ This shows itself in the 
gradual secularisation of all our interests. There will 

^ The totemic system of group organisation is a very striking instance 
of this, as different writers agree. 

^ Guyau, Non-Religion of the Future. 



The Religious Interpretation iii 

remain no divine, no sacred, even no profane — only 
the secular. ^ 

The facts recognised by sociologists to-day, however, 
confirm the conclusions reached above, and show that 
the social motives involved in religion are deep-rooted 
and essential. They are no other than those by which 
the individual self-consciousness itself is built up. To 
say, with Clifford and Romanes, that God is a "world- 
eject," a socialised and idealised "other-self," is to say 
that God is recognised naturally and inevitably, in the 
same sense that our human fellows are, on the one hand, 
and society as such, on the other hand. The differ- 
entiation of the personal object into myself and other- 
self, ego and alter, takes form gradually in a larger 
whole of personal values which are social in origin. It 
is this body of self-values, collective, ideal, mystical, 
that is ejectively embodied in God. 

30. If this be true, religion will persist in human 
life and the religious interest will receive an interpre- 
tation that recognises these motives of man. Accord- 

^ The gradual secularisation of social institutions is of course a very 
notable fact. The "divine right of kings, " the "temporal power " of the 
church, the "establishment" in all its forms — these give place to the 
radical separation of church and state. Similarly, there is the rapid 
secularisation of education, of law, of moral consciousness, with the 
growth of political liberty. All this means, however, I think, not the 
decay of the religious sanction, but the shifting of religious authority 
from a political and social to a spiritual and personal source. A similar 
development has taken place in the passing of the civil sanction as such 
from theocracy to democracy. There is a freeing both of religion and of 
the state, through the freeing of the individual. The growth of the 
individual in autonomy of judgment, producing a true democracy of 
conscience, refines the religious interest, but does not necessarily lessen 
or impair it. A greater menace is to be seen, perhaps, in the de- 
cay of the active religious practices in which the social motives of 
communion, revival, and common enthusiasm confirm and fortify the 
individual. 



112 Genetic Interpretation 

ingly, another interesting theory springs up, in which 
society itself — the original "other" and persistent 
fellow, to the individual — is considered the true re- 
ligious object. According to Durkheim, to whom the 
evidence of the social origins of religion owes so much, 
the social group, whether clan, tribe, or nation, is the 
proper object, as it is the original cause, of the indi- 
vidual's religious interest. This interest forms for itself 
a personal God because it is unaware, or only vaguely 
aware, of its social obligations. What it really means 
to recognise and worship is the self, the spirit, the 
immanent principle, of Society. 

We have here, in fact, a reasoned revival of a sort 
of religion of humanity — an interesting return to the 
line of tradition of French Positivism. It is sociological 
in spirit, a Comtean conception. Society "saves its 
face," as it were, in the presence of the individual in 
whom it has generated the religious need, by posing as 
God under certain thin disguises. ^ 

31. The present writer signalised, in an earlier 
publication, the fact of the close relation between the 
god of a social group and its own national spirit, in 
terms which he ventures to utilise in the following 
paragraphs, ^ 

"It appears in this way: the ideal self or deity to the 
individual, is the further carrying out, in the imagina- 
tion, of the self -meaning; and this includes other indi- 
viduals as well as the personal self. It is the ideal of 
a group, of a set of social relations, showing practical 
and moral oppositions, embarrassments and achieve- 
ments. It is not the ideal held by other tribes and 

'See Durkheim, La Vie religieuse, pp. 611 ff. 

^Froc. Fourth Inter. Cong. Hist, of Religion, Oxford, August, 1908, 
reprinted in Darwin and the Humanities, ist ed., 1909, pp. loi ff. 



The Religious Interpretation 113 

races. The deity shows the growth of the normal social 
relations, and reflects their character, because he is the 
projected personal ideal of the group. While the deity 
must be thought of by these individuals as apart from 
them, since he is personal, yet he is the controlling 
spiritual presence, the voice, the oracle of the group, 
and may be approached through the proper mediation 
with rites and ceremonies. The tribal deity is in this 
important sense, then, the tribal spirit; he is conceived 
in terms of the tribal self. ^ The ideal that hovers over 
the personal self of the individual and impregnates 
his spiritual life, is one with that of the tribal or national 
self-consciousness. ' Great is Diana of the Ephesians ' 
is not only a formula of personal religious experience; 
it is also a proclamation of civic or national unity ; and 
both are possible in one because, in the process by 
which the individual idealises his life in community 
with others, he also erects, in common with them, a 
communal or national ideal. 'The perfect self,' he 
might say, 'which I should attain, is the same as that 
which you also find you should attain; and it is the 
same that we both imagine as our national spirit, 
patron, or God.' Deity may always be taken, therefore, 
to reveal the communal ideal of personality, as that 
develops continuously, while, at the same time, it 
supplies the appropriate object for the individual's 
personal worship. The Jehovah of the Hebrews is the 
embodiment both of the national aspirations, as voiced 

' Cj. Espinas, Les Origines de la Technologie, 1897, p. 34 ff., who says: 
i'The God of a people is nothing else than its own moral consciousness 
objectified. Zeus represents what is common to the ideals of the Greeks 
scattered from the Euxine to the Pillars of Hercules. Later on, when 
reflection became possible, Heracleitus seemed to understand this. 
' The common reason, ' said he, ' which is the divine reason, and through 
which we become rational, is the measure of truth. ' " 
8 



114 Genetic Interpretation 

in the religion of the prophets, and of the ethical quali- 
ties of the Jews. What a contrast to the polytheism 
of the Greeks!" 

But it does not follow from this that the group, as 
it exists, is the object of religion. The existing group, 
the sociological group, is not what the religious ideal 
denotes, nor what the national aspirations celebrate. 
I do not sing to America as it is, when I sing the hymn 
"America;" but to America as it should be, its ideals 
fulfilled, its promise accomplished. 

"My country, 'tis of thee, 
Thou land of liberty — 

Of thee I sing! 
Land where our fathers died, 
Land of the Pilgrims' pride, 
From every mountain side 
Let freedom ring !" 

This is a hymn to liberty, to freedom, of which 
America is taken to be the symbol. The social ideal is 
symbolised by the group, just as the ideal self or god 
of the individual is symbolised in the concrete object 
of religious veneration. The two ideals are fused in 
one through the motives under which — as we have 
seen — personality is at once socialised and idealised. 
But under this common ideal, imposed equally upon 
both, the concrete individual and the concrete group 
live in all sorts of opposition and disharmony. 

Religion of humanity, then, to be a religion, must 
mean religion of ideal humanity ; but this is what re- 
ligion of divinity also means. For divinity is humanity 
idealised in both its aspects, individual and social. ^ 

' Hence to find ground for identifying the religious object with society, 
we must seize upon illustrations of high patriotism, in which ideals are 



The Religious Interpretation 115 

32. The reason of the fusion of the two ideals, 
social and religious, is to be found in part, as has been 
remarked, in the factors by which they are in common 
; established : factors intrinsic to the development of 
personality. But that is not sufficient. The outcome 
of idealisation in the social realm is not a supreme per- 
sonality, but an ideal group, a Utopian social order, 
for which all the individuals must be equally fitted.^ 
This we have seen to be ethical in its character, not 
religious. Actually, it is realised only in part, and 
progressively, through the reflection in the group of 
the moralisation of its members. How then does this 
ideal come to merge itself in that of the religious life? 

It would seem to be in order, as we may surmise, 
speaking teleologically, to find for itself a concrete 
embodiment.'' The Utopian society is conceived in 

embodied: the flag, the national hero, the incident of patriotic virtue, 
the holy war, the crusade, etc. These do invoke ideals that seem to 
merge themselves in that of religion. But when we come to look into 
the common prosaic life of society — its de facto, un-ideal, "seamy" side 
— how the religious ideal finds itself repelled! Tradition, public taste, 
art, justice, institutions of all sorts, in which the ensemble of the group 
life shows itself, may be un-ideal and non-religious — often worse. 

^ It is an interesting question whether, in an ideal society, each and 
all of the members would have to be ideal individuals. 

' This would seem to be in somewhat marked opposition to M. Durk- 
heim's view {loc. cit., pp. 600 ff.), who admits that it is ideal society that 
is symbolised in religion, but goes on to maintain that social ideals are 
in some way actually present in the social reality and are absorbed by 
the individual on occasions of " social effervescence. " The "something 
more" presented to the individual on these occasions ("more," that is, 
than the usual social rapport) is the same as the "something more" by 
which, to the individual, the social ideal surpasses the social fact. This 
is an extraordinarily summary way of disposing of ideals! What are 
ideals, but imagined or desired ends set up in some consciousness? ' How 
can they be present in society before any individual conceives or imag- 
ines them? — unless, indeed, society be supposed to have an actual 
aggregate consciousness of its own. The ideal present in a society can 



ii6 Genetic Interpretation 

terms of its perfected unit. The formal obligation of 
morality does not suffice for the ends of ideal society, 
any more than for those of individual life. The postu- 
late of the ideal group, even more than that of ideal 
individuality, must be reinforced by the assumption 
of the existence of a being who embodies them both 
at once. 

In this sense again religion serves to bind together 
the actual and the ideal. Just as, for the individual, 
the reality of God substitutes a personal relation for the 
mere formal postulate of the ideal; so also for society 
it substitutes, for a Utopian moral order, a genuine 
concrete end. The injunction, "Be ye perfect, even 
as your Father in heaven is perfect," means more, both 
to the individual and to society, than if it read, "Be 
ye perfect as a moral individual and in your social 
relationships." The element of justice in the social 
ideal, for example, has progressed through concrete 
historical stages, and is taking on specific international 



only be the principle which seems to some thinker to explain its character 
and tendencies ; but, so far as it is ideal, it is not yet realised in society. 

Further, is it psychologically true that we conceive our ideals when we 
are lashed into social frenzy, carried away by social "effervescence"? 
If so, then the riot and the mob would present the occasion for the birth 
of social and religious ideals! This is to my mind nothing short of an 
affront to that fine and noble movement of consciousness by which it 
interprets its data forward to their fullest and richest meaning. It is 
irrelevant to deny, as M. Durkheim does, a mystic faculty of idealisation, 
for it is not at all mystical, nor is it a special faculty. It is, on the con- 
trary, the normal counterpart to the judgment of fact; it is the assump- 
tion of value, out of which, in the form of confirmed hypotheses, new 
judgments are established and selected. This assumptive, idealising 
movement of the imagination is just as normal as the judging, believing 
movement is; and it is as essential to the development of knowledge. 
See the treatment of the entire subject by Meinong, Uher Annahmen, 
2nd ed., and the writer's Thought and Things, vol. i., chap, viii., § 6 f., and 
chap. X., § 8; also vol. iii., chap, viii., § 3. 



The Religious Interpretation 117 

form to-day in law, arbitration, treaties, etc., through 
the progress in the ideals of individual right ; but these, 
in turn, have a further sanction and represent a stronger 
motive when, leaving the domain of pure ethics, they 
enter into the sphere of religion. "Thou shalt love 
the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour 
as thyself," is the counsel of justice, equality, and right 
of the religious ideal. 

33. We are obliged to conclude then, that, instead of 
disappearing, religion in some form will abide. In the 
higher union of the motives of personal and social 
interest in that of religion, there is a return on another 
plane to the early state of things noted by sociologists 
in primitive culture, where religion dominated both 
individual and social life. The sacred symbol was the 
emblem of clan and tribe and also the badge of indi- 
viduality and personal relationship. It is interesting 
to see that, after the successive differentiations of 
motive in the special interests of civilised life and re- 
flective thought, the resulting ideals fuse together again 
in the postulate of Deity. 

How far this postulate makes itself good, however, 
either in practice or for reflection, is another question. 
It requires detailed study. It is the philosophical 
question as to whether and how far the religious con- 
sciousness is really the organ of the apprehension of 
reality in the form of God. ^ 

' Enough has been said, however, to show that primitive religion was 
not, as is often claimed, a first attempt at a logical explanation of the 
world. It was, on the contrary, an emotional and social interpretation, 
from which the logical and scientific points of view only gradually freed 
themselves. 



CHAPTER VII 

RELIGIOUS REALITY AND RELIGIOUS NEGATION 

§ J. The Religious Object as existing 

WHEN we examine more closely the factor of 
idealisation in the organisation of the religious 
interest, certain peculiarities appear. 

I. As we have seen, the affective ideal is a term of 
value set up at the limit of the process through which 
ends are mediated by facts. The ideal man, for ex- 
ample, is the supposed final man, as he would be if the 
series of better and better actual men were carried on 
to infinity, to the ideal. The actual men mediate 
progressively the ideal or perfect man. At the limit, 
however, the means, the real cases, disappear; the 
ideal is allowed to stand in its own right. The postu- 
lation or assumption of an ideal ethical value does not 
rest upon hypothetical acts of virtue, but imposes 
itself as unconditional and absolute. This means, of 
course, that it is really a postulated value, not an actual 
one. So far as an analogous value is actually realised, 
it is part of the full reality of the thing to which its 
worth is attributed. As ideal, the most we can say 
of it is that it is possible and desirable. * 

'This is the origin of the resulting norms of the "practical reason"; 
see Thought and Things, vol. iii., chap. vii. 

Ii8 



Religious Reality and Negation 119 

In the movement of cognition proper while the result 
is similar, the process is the opposite ; the idea or truth 
set up as means is isolated from the value it mediates, 
and is itself taken as a naked and neutral datum of 
reason. It is supposed to hold irrespective of the 
interest that apprehends it. The cognitive ideal is 
disinterested, personally neutral. ^ 

In the case of religion both these processes seem to 
be modified. 

2. In the first place, the ideal itself of the religious 
interest — the ideal personality of God — is set up not 
as simply ideal, simply desirable and possible, but as 
actually existing. The objective thing or idea which 
mediates the value does not fall away, as in other cases, 
in the process by which the ideal is postulated. On the 
contrary, it remains; and the ideal takes on the form 
of an actually realised worth. "God exists and has 
the ideal attributes; with reference to him they are 
not ideal, but real ; it is only with reference to us that 
they are ideals": this is the utterance of the religious 
consciousness. There seems here to be an attempt to 
escape from the dualism characteristic of the practical 
life, the dualism between fact or idea and end; to find 
in one experience both the real person and the absolute 
good. ^ 

3. Moreover, second, the integrity of the logical 
movement is also impaired. The religious object, 
although taken to exist, is not the outcome of processes 
of knowledge of a logical sort — generalisation, impli- 

' So the categories of the pure reason: see ibid., vol. ii., chap, vii., § 4, 
and vol. iii., chap, ii., § 5. 

' Tliis has its counterpart in the history of reflection, in the attempts 
to find in God both the summum honum and the infinite idea (in the 
terms of the first great exponent of this doctrine, Plato). 



120 Genetic Interpretation 

cation, reasoning. God is not a logical general or 
universal, following by necessary implication from 
concrete data ; not a concept at all, but an imaginative 
postulate or assumption. We do not find here, in the 
contents of the religious meaning, a system of relational 
terms treated as the neutral and disinterested discovery 
of thought. Far from it; God is a personal presence, 
in the singular number,^ which imposes directly upon 
the believer the obligation of respect and the duty to 
practise the religious rites. Its sanctions are those of 
an emotional and social order, rather than those of a 
physical or intellectual order. God is variously de- 
scribed by the faithful as a need, a resort, an inspira- 
tion, a saviour, a refuge and help; not primarily as a 
truth or a conclusion. And the attempts to prove the 
existence of God logically have never had more than 
the degree of cogency which attaches to apologetic 
modes of argumentation. 

So far then from finding that the intellectual scaffold- 
ing gives body to the religious ideal, we find, on the 
contrary, that this scaffolding can not stand alone. 
The personal God is not even, like the personal fellow- 
man, an object of direct contact through the ordinary 
avenues of inter-subjective intercourse. In religion 
in general the physical manifestations of the presence 
of the deity, taking on the form of miracles, are food for 
the sense of wonder, awe, and mystery; but they are 
not the means by which he is normally apprehended or 
approached. And with the progress of logical modes 
of thought, the miraculous factor in the religious 
experience is greatly reduced. Along with this dis- 
appears also the claim of religion to explain the uni- 

' Even in polytheism, the different gods are unlike one another; each 
has his appropriate province or domain. 



Religious Reality and Negation 121 

verse by a special cosmology and a special psychology ; to 
discover the laws of things and the rules of life by a 
special system of magical formulas or by a series of 
special revelations. ^ 

4. Why then, we may ask, does the religious ideal, 
unlike other non-intellectual ideal values, impose 
itself upon consciousness as something actually existing? 

It can not be because it is an ideal of personality; 
for the ethical ideal, which does not make this claim, 
is also such : nor because it is an ideal of truth ; for it is 
not established by the processes of knowledge which 
discover and confirm the true. 

It is, in our view, because it remains always a social 
ideal, an ideal of actual intercourse. Unlike the ethical 
and the intellectual, it never passes into the phase of 
inner autonomy to the individual to which, in both the 
other cases, we have applied the term "synnomic." 
Religion, considered both as a personal interest and as 
an objective content, remains "syndoxic" or aggregate 
in its force ; it is a body of individual acknowledgments, 
of personal consents; it does not pass over into the 
realm of impersonal imperatives or norms. This 
distinguishes it both from the ethical and from the 
rational. 

5. The contrast between religion and morals in 
this respect is especially instructive. The ethical 
passes from the form of mutual obligation, as between 
man and man, into duty to God as a fellow-person on a 
different plane, and finally becomes simply and only 
duty to the moral law, to the moral ideal itself, to 
one's own inner light, and to one's self. 

' In Christianity the range of revelation and inspiration has been 
gradually restricted to spiritual things; even the infallibility of religious 
authority does not extend to secular matters. 



122 Genetic Interpretation 

" To thine own self be true, 

And thou hast done with fears; 
Man knows no other law, 
Search he a thousand years." 

Swinburne^ 

The moral law is thus self-imposed and self-sanctioned ; 
just as the ideal of truth is self-consistent and self- 
sustaining. Neither requires a further existence, an 
external person, to maintain it. Merely by its pres- 
ence in the consciousness of the one individual, it 
shows itself to be imiversal and necessary, "synnomic," 
in its force. 

But the religious ideal is not of this character. It 
is not and can not be universalised in judgments of 
synnomic force. In its essence, as a first-hand experi- 
ence, it requires the actual presence of the Other: God 
must be really at hand. His presence to one will not 
do for another; nor can the intimate character of the 
relation be generalised. In religion, one does not feel 
the force of a self -legislating and formal imperative. 

§2. The union of Ideal and Actual in the Religious 

Reality 

6. Looked upon as a way of interpreting the world, 
religion is historically of the first importance. It is 
a first interpretation, a form of interest focused di- 
rectly upon certain things — things sacred, holy, divine. 
In this spontaneous form, as a direct interest, it is not 
to be confused with the theory of religion, nor with the 
philosophy^ that justifies the religious in preference 
to other interpretations. 

' Quoted from memory. 

^ This latter is to be taken up later on. The science of objective reli- 
gions, it is plain, can not exhaust the sphere of religion, just as the "sci- 



Religious Reality and Negation 123 

If we are right in finding the religious object, the 
deity, to be in some sense personal, as well as ideal, 
then we may say that the reality upon which it ter- 
minates is of the nature of a postulate ; something sup- 
posed, imagined, anticipated, not something directly 
given, experienced, or proved.^ Not that personality 
in others can not be actually experienced and in its own 
way proved, for purposes of knowledge — ^it can be and is : 
but that ideal personality can not be. All ideals are 
in their nature products of the imagination, built up 
upon knowledge, but going beyond it. This is true 
of the ideal person, God. Like the ethical and aesthetic, 
the religious ideal is a postulate. 

The religious postulate, however, as racial history 
shows, preceded these others genetically. It was 
present when morals were merely socially sanctioned 
habits and customs, in which the properly ethical 
imperative, the inner light of conscience, had not yet 
appeared. The authority whose agents and penalties 
held society together in an effective organisation was 
in the first instance religious. It is probable that the 
first interpretation of the world, the first recognition 

ence of manners " can not take the place of ethics ; for in each case there 
is the personal attitude of the agent which is not fully embodied in the 
external facts or institutions studied. In the "science of manners" 
only the general forms of conduct can be observed, the mere shell, not 
the inner imperative or ideal with reference to which the individual makes 
his moral decisions. So with religion; institutions and cults, histori- 
cally and comparatively considered, conserve values which must in 
each case be interpreted by the individual in terms of personal com- 
munion or absorption. But the two subjective experiences remain on 
different levels, since while ethical judgment has the synnomic or legis- 
lative force, religious faith has not. 

' On this distinction, looked at genetically, see Thought and Things, 
vol. iii., "Interest and Art," chap, i., and vol. ii., "Experimental Logic" 
chap. 5. 



124 Genetic Interpretation 

of a force in and back of appearances in nature, was 
that of religion. In this sense, as Comte declared, 
the theological age preceded the metaphysical and the 
positive ages. 

In all the differentiations that follow, in both 
racial and individual development, the religious inter- 
est retains its proper character. The practical and 
theoretical interests develop from this common root; 
but the main stem remains erect, producing another 
tree — the tree of religion itself. 

7. The constant peculiarity of this interest is that 
it both idealises its object with the moral, and actual- 
ises it with the intellectual.^ In this, as we have seen, 
it seems to partake of both the ideals of the practical 
and the rational life, different as they are; for practice 
idealises in erecting ends, and knowledge actualises in 
discovering truth. So we are driven to the question 
that this state of things suggests: Is it true that in 
religion we have a mode of experience in which the 
opposition between the actual and the ideal is overcome? 
Do the theoretical and practical interests of mankind 
come to a real reconciliation and union in the religious 
postulate of God? 

8. We have to answer "no" to this question for two 
essential reasons. 

In the first place, no postulate as such can of itself 
permanently satisfy the theoretical interest, the interest 
of proof. The absence of proof will always tortiu-e 
and the unfulfilled categories of reason will always 
protest. Witness the logical controversies as to the 
existence and nature of God; and the philosophical 

' See the writer's Darwin and the Humanities, 2nd ed., London, p. 105. 
In that work (chap, v.) the social character of religion, as proved by 
anthropology and psychology alike, is put in evidence. 



Religious Reality and Negation 125 

attempts to construe the categories of cause, identity, 
sufficient reason, law, in terms of design, personality, 
providence, freedom. The mere assumption of divine 
personality, whose r61e it is to accomplish this feat, in 
no wise shows how it can be logically done. 

Whatever may be the value of religion as supplement- 
ary to reason, as substitute for it, or even as weapon 
of its refutation, it can not be said to fulfil the ideal of 
reason, which desiderates a body of neutral truth, 
independent of the personal life and interests of the 
individual. 

9. A second and more positive objection is to be 
discovered in the nature of the religious experience 
itself. This experience does not reveal an ordered 
organisation of the factors of our varied interests, but 
a loose mixture of motives, each forcing itself on occa- 
sion to the fore. ^ It is in religious emotion, intense, 
ecstatic, overwhelming, that the actuality of the deity, 
the very presence of God, is vividly realised; but it is 
just in this experience that the ideality of the divine 
nature, both rational and practical, seems largely to 
disappear. God, the holy, the awful, the ineffable, 
the infinite, is, by reason of his very ideality, unap- 
proachable, removed from human life and apprehension. 
As ideal, he can be contemplated only afar off; it is 
only as actual that he can be humanised. Hence it is 
that a mediator, a priest, an intercessor, a saviour, a 
madonna, a saint intervenes to stand, as an actual 
presence, between God, the ineffable ideal, and the 
finite man. This movement — common to different re- 
ligions — and substitution of a more-human person for 

'The conflicts and oppositions of the religious life have been well 
brought out by Stratton (G. M. Stratton, The Psychology of the Religious 
Life, 19 1 1.) 



126 Genetic Interpretation 

God or of a more-holy person for man — is sufficient 
witness to the failure of the religious interest to reach 
of itself an object at once actual and ideal. ^ 

What would seem to be lacking is a religious "im- 
perative," an intuition of religious reason, imposing 
belief in the existence of a personal God. But just 
in passing into this form — if religion did pass into it — 
thus becoming synnomic, as thought and conscience 
are, it would lose the social character that gives it con- 
creteness and actuality. God would then be, like 
rational identity and moral law, an empty form, the 
postulate of value in an abstract realm; a norm of 
reason, instead of the actual person found by the 
devotee to be a "very present help in trouble." The 
warmth and intimacy of personal religion woiild be 
lost to humanity, much as the child misses the sym- 
pathetic coimsels of a loving parent, when, on arriving 
at maturity, he finds it necessary to be a moral law- 
giver to himself.^ The divine attributes of pity, 
mercy, pardon, love, are personal and in a sense op- 
tional with the deity. In the lower religions, they are 
represented in terms similar to human caprice or self- 
interest; the deities have moods, are subject to fatigue, 
ennui, and passion. Refine these personal attributes 

^ The "mysteries of faith," many of them common to different 
religions, are properly called mysteries: the union of divine and human 
personality, the incarnation, the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection. 
They all assert for faith the presence of the infinite and ideal in the 
supernatural ; but what they present to the eyes is the finite and actual. 
Beyond faith, there is no further assurance. 

^ In the matter of the religious "instinct" leading men, when in 
danger and in crises of every kind, to call upon God, I think we are in 
the presence, not of a form of religious imperative proper, but of a form 
of social dependence in which the elements of the religious life are in 
evidence. It is like the appeal of a prisoner to the judge for clemency 
or mercy; an appeal outside the domain of justice or reason. 



Religious Reality and Negation 127 

as we may, they can not be universalised in formal 
statements. 

10. The actuality of the religious object, indeed, 
is not guaranteed by knowledge or proved by reason; 
it must be accepted by faith. It is a matter of per- 
sonal experience, social both in origin and in nature. 
The social relation of man to God, as one of dependence, 
help, communion, is written large on every page of 
religious narrative. The dualism of self-and-other is 
sharpened as the individuality of the believer is height- 
ened over against that of God; and when, in religious 
ecstasy, the individual loses himself by participation 
in the mystic presence, the religious interest properly 
speaking loses itself in turn in the general fusion of 
the elements of personality. 

§ J. The Religious Antinomy 

11. But if the element of religious actuality is 
immediate, that of religious ideality is mediate. An 
ideal is always the end-term of a process of mediation, 
whether this be theoretical or practical. Ideal truth 
is a supposed extension of actual truth; it is an out- 
come, mediated by ideas, feelings, experiences that are 
actual. Likewise ideal value is something beyond the 
present actual worth we possess. The latter as means 
mediate the former as end. 

Accordingly, it is plain that if the ideality of God is 
insisted upon, it must be by reasserting the finiteness 
and incompleteness of the means — the symbols and 
emblems of the religious life — by which this ideality 
is mediated. Hence the force and success of the re- 
formations in history which protest against the ten- 
dency to "idolatry" and "image- worship," that is, the 



128 Genetic Interpretation 

tendency to identify God with the image or idol that 
symbolises his presence. The purity of the ideal is 
in constant danger of being impaired by the return to 
actuality as represented in the symbol. 

But the reverse tendency is also real; and it issues 
in a movement that is equally in evidence in the history 
of religion: the protest of the practical religious life 
against the abstractness of creeds and the vagueness 
of philosophical definitions. In Deism and Pantheism 
the religious interest finds much to complain of — the 
remoteness and impersonality of the Deity. It also 
finds artificial the intrusion of a mediator or intercessor, 
brought in to guarantee and actualise a relation which 
should be one of direct experience and communion. 

12. These two historical tendencies taken together 
show the essential factors of the religious ideal — its 
actuality protesting against its ideality, and its ideality 
explaining away its actuality. They illustrate, better 
than any theoretical statement could, the inherent 
difficulty of maintaining the actuality of an ideal erected 
as a postulate by the processes of affective logic and 
interest. It also illustrates the difficulty of reading 
any concrete experience in terms of completed worth 
or ideality. Ideals are not reached as discoveries, they 
are what we desire; actualities are what ,we discover, 
whether we find them desirable or not. 

This sharp antinomy in the meaning of the reli- 
gious object makes the reality it postulates unsatisfy- 
ing as a synthetic mode of experience. The dualism 
under which consciousness labours, in its various ren- 
derings of the real, are not relieved ; the embarrassments 
of the practical life are not removed. The resort to 
the supernatural is the inevitable outcome of the de- 
velopment of the religious interest ; but on the terms of 



Religious Reality and Negation 129 

this postulate, the supernatural enters into the natural 
only as a deus ex machina, by a miraculous intervention. 
It is a supposition motived by fundamental demands 
of the moral and religious life; but it is not established 
as part of the system of existing realities. The opposi- 
tions between ideal and actual, the postulate and the 
implication, the assumption and the presupposition, 
the mediate and the immediate, are mitigated, it is 
true, but they are not radically healed. 

§ 4. Religious Negation. (7) The Non-Religious or 

Secular 

In the consideration of the various modes of psychic 
function, it is profitable to investigate the negative 
along with the positive phase of meaning.^ We may 
well carry further the enquiry as to the existence of 
negation in the movement of religious interest.^ 

13. A somewhat radical distinction has been estab- 
lished, it will be remembered, between the attitudes of 
denial and rejection,^ Denial attaches — along with 
affirmation — to a proposed relationship in the content 
of knowledge or thought; this relationship is denied 
when it fails to establish itself in judgment. One 
thing, the predicate, is denied of another, the subject. 
Logical denial is an advanced stage of this sort of oppo- 
sition between items of knowledge. 

Rejection — on the contrary — along with acceptance, 
is a different attitude. It is the attitude of refusing, 
repelling, withdrawing; of excluding something from 

^ Cf. Thought and Things, where pre-Iogical, logical, affective, and 
aesthetic rejection and denial are considered. 

' It is considered, for the case of early racial interpretation, above, 
chap, iv., sects. 8-10. 

3 See above, chap, iv., sect. 8 f . 
9 



130 Genetic Interpretation 

the sphere of control or existence in which it might 
have found a place. It is a movement of interest and 
selection, not one of mere recognition or acknowledg- 
ment of fact or truth. Denial is merely recognitive 
of an exclusion which holds between terms; rejection 
is selective and personal, a matter of the exclusive 
interest of the knower himself. Denial is a matter of 
inability to believe; rejection, of the refusal to tolerate.^ 

But in negation by selection, there are again two 
cases, as we have seen above. In selecting something 
as good, beautiful, satisfying, we may simply overlook, 
forget, or ignore, and in this way exclude, everything 
except that to which our interest is directed. When 
our exclusive interest selects something, all the rest 
of the world is for the time rejected. ^Esthetic enjoy- 
ment is notably of this sort — absorbing and exclusive. 
This has been described as "privative" exclusion or 
negation. '^ 

But there is a more positive rejection, an intentional 
exclusion, that means more than simple neglect. The 
morally bad, the cesthetically ugly, are the objects of 
actual rejection, of positive condemnation and disap- 
proval. 

In these two forms, both of which are characteristic 
of the life of interest, selective exclusion is in striking 
contrast with cognitive opposition and logical denial. 

14. We find, even on slight examination, that in 
the manner of its rejection, religious interest is true 
to its nature; it establishes both forms of selective ex- 
clusion, but it does not issue in logical denial. 

In the case of primitive religions, the facts are plain. 

' See Thought and Things, vol. i., chap, ix., and vol. ii., chap. viii. 
2 Ihid., vol. i., chap, ix., § 4; also vol. iii., chap, ix., and chap, x., 
§§5ff. 



Religious Reality and Negation 131 

In the totemic system, the animal totem includes the 
group; this in turn excludes the members of other 
totemic groups. It is not by reason of different indi- 
vidual characters or qualities that this exclusion takes 
place; it is by reason of the totemic name and the 
relationship signified by it. The affective interest 
by which the social and mystic class is established rules 
out all but members of this class, no matter what their 
other qualifications may be. This is privative exclu- 
sion ; it proceeds by the establishment of a class through 
a movement of interest; all else is for this interest 
negative. 

Within the same phratries (the larger divisions 
of a tribe) various clans may exist, with their totemic 
symbols side by side. In certain of their interests 
and practices — such as intermarriage between the 
clans — these groups overlap and interpenetrate; in 
others — such as the eating of the flesh of the totemic 
animals — they are rigidly exclusive. But in neither 
of these cases is the exclusion of the nature of a logical 
opposition based on generalisation or induction.^ It 
is not due to cognition of differences, but to the selec- 
tions and exclusions of interest. 

This state of things extends to family relationships, 
tribal organisation in time and space, in short to all 
the details in which the totem stands for the group. 
The other class, that of the foreign totem, is in so far not 
considered profane, not necessarily hostile, not at all 
wrong in its similar adhesion to its totem; its affairs 
are merely neglected, not included in the interest of 
the one who finds it different from his own. From the 

' M. Durkheim appears to confuse the two, or at least not to dis- 
tinguish them, in saying {La Vie religieuse, p. 342) that the savage's 
negations are simply "excessive" logical denials. 



132 Genetic Interpretation 

point of view of the sacred, it is secular. But it has 
its own system of sacred things; each allows this to 
all. Intolerance as such does not begin in the sphere 
of the secular, but only when we touch upon the more 
positive sort of exclusion characteristic of the "profane." 
The secular or non-religious in general is thus de- 
fined: it is all of that which is outside of the religious 
interest as neither belonging to it nor opposed to it. 
It is the religiously indifferent. That, on the contrary, 
which is opposed to the religious interest is not secular, 
since it is not indifferent ; it is the profane ^ 

§5. Religious Negation. (2) The Irreligious or 
Profane 

15. Over and beyond the mere indifference of the 
religious interest, which defines the secular, there is a 
more positive movement of exclusion or rejection, which 
defines the profane, the irreligious, the religious bad. 
All through the life of the primitive clan — to cite 
primitive religion again — there runs a system of posi- 
tive prohibitions. Innumerable things — marriage within 
the clan, intrusion upon sacred places, eating of the 
flesh of sacred animals, contact with things which 
are taboo — are tragic in their negative meaning. The 
religious bad like the ethical, later on, is something to 
avoid, to resist, to combat, to destroy. The social 
motives organised in the religious interest reject the 
profane thing, and in so doing, define it. 

All religions alike show this: all have their profane, 
as well as their sacred ; and none stop with mere log- 
ical definition of the one or the other. Religion gene- 

' I do not find anywhere this or indeed any clear distinction between 
the merely secular and the profane; discussions generally treat them 
together, as opposed to the sacred. 



Religious Reality and Negation 133 

rally personifies the evil or profane in demons, evil 
spirits, devils, thus rendering it more positive and 
concrete. As the sacred, so too the profane is made 
incarnate. Satan is the arch-enemy of God, the source 
of all profanations, the "great-bad," to be rejected in 
all his forms by society and by the single man. 

In another place ^ we have discussed the topic of the 
supremely or "ideally" bad, the summum malum, in 
treating of the ethical mode of negation. We saw that 
the process of idealisation, following its normal course, 
imagines the fully evil, the great-bad. It is the "ideal 
to avoid," something set up by way of contrast to the 
ideal good, but not found existing anywhere, except in 
the religious postulate of a supreme devil or Satan. 
The assumption of a moral ideal, imposed by the prac- 
tical reason, does not involve the reality of a negative 
ideal, the supremely bad, but only defines it in oppo- 
sition to the ideal good. 

16. In religion, however, as we have seen, the 
postulation of the ideal carries the assumption of 
actual existence : God exists. And in this assumption, 
actuality is given also to the ethical demand for the 
good person and for a perfect moral or social order. 
God is a person, and with him exists a "kingdom of 
heaven," peopled by saints and holy spirits. It is 
interesting now to note that the motives of religious 
exclusion in the definition of the profane involve the 
same demand for actuality. Not only does the devil, 
the infernal person, exist, but there is also a kingdom 
of evil, a place full of spirits, personal but malignant, 
who do violence in every possible way to the ideals of 
religion and morality. The hierarchy of saints, angels, 
seraphs, archangels, is matched by that of demons, 

' Thought and Things, vol. iii., chap. ix. 



134 Genetic Interpretation 

devils, arch-devils, Satan. All these exist by much the 
same right of actuality as the good spirits and God — 
the right of the social fellow whose presence is estab- 
lished with that of the person to whom he is the socius. 
While this is undoubtedly true — the history of reli- 
gion fully proves it — there are still reasons for thinking 
that in this wide demand for actuality, religion in its 
cruder stages asserts a claim which is later to be aban- 
doned or is at least not insisted upon. Granted that 
in the social and concrete character of the ideal the 
actual existence of God is involved, does it follow that 
this is true of lesser personalities, either good or bad? — 
and is it true of the supremely bad personality, the 
arch-devil? 

§ 6. Profane Reality: the Arch-Devil 

We have to answer this question negatively in both 
cases. In the subordinate personages of all kinds, the 
ideality is lacking which the religious interest desider- 
ates; they are carried along with God by a diffusion 
of sacredness, which is a most common phenomenon in 
the sphere of religion. In the arch-devil, on the other 
hand, the social requirement of religion is violated: 
the devil is anti-social, as he is anti-moral. ^ 

17. As to angels and demons alike — creatures that 
come short of being gods — their very incompleteness 
and subordination render them unavailable as inde- 
pendent ends of genuine religious interest. As soon 

' Apart from considerations of origin, we might say that the essential 
religious relation between the one person and God might subsist regard- 
less of the existence of any other persons whatever in the universe ; and 
also, on the contrary, that, while not demanded, personaUties short of 
gods, like angels and demons, may exist by the same right — whatever 
it be — that good and bad persons exist in the world. 



Religious Reality and Negation 135 

as the postulate of one supreme deity, the ideal self 
of the refined religious consciousness, disentangles it- 
self from the social conditions of its origin, this ideal 
stands alone. It passes from the cruder stages, in 
which it earlier embodies itself, into the region of 
spiritual perfection. The subordinate beings remain 
as vestiges, a kind of reduced gods, or magnified men — 
epic mythical heroes or ancestors, beings having all 
sorts of semi-divine and semi-satanic attributes. They 
constitute a sort of filling in of the series of mediating 
terms between man and God, a series which the religious 
interest continually seeks to constitute in order to 
bridge the interval between the finite and the infinite, 
the actual and the ideal. But this is not essential to 
the postulate of God. In the development of Christian 
theology, for example, the theory of angels has always 
been a sort of romantic annex to serious doctrine, a 
concession at once to a stronger faith and to a mysticism 
tinged with the sesthetic^; and demons have been the 
gargoyles, as it were, on the temple of sacred truth. 
Neither the one nor the other is taken too seriously 
when once religion has outgrown the swaddling clothes 
of mystic participation and myth, and has substituted 
the truths of psychology and science for the practices 
of psychosophy and magic. 

18. The case of the devil — that is, the arch-fiend, 
as opposed to mere demons — is more instructive, both 
because of the semblance of actuality thrown about him 
by religion, and because of the fact that reflective and 
critical religion itself understands that his existence in 
personal form is only semblant. As has been said, 
the demand for concreteness and social realness in the 
relation of God to man leads to the assumption of 

' How angels have figured in sacred art! 



136 Genetic Interpretation 

actuality; and this assumption passes, by the same 
process and for the same reason, over to the great-bad, 
the devil. As one can worship a living God more 
fervently, so one can fight more effectively a living 
devil. So the "great-bad" of morals becomes the 
"infernal person" of religion. 

But both of these, the great-bad and the infernal, 
represent in the imagination not ideals of acceptance, 
of the desirable, but ideals of rejection, of the undesir- 
able. They are things to avoid, to spurn. They are 
inconsistent with the reality of the great-good, the 
ideal worth, and the divine person. The summum 
malum is in opposition to the summum bonum. Even 
in ethics, where the postulate of actuality is not present, 
only one of these values, the good or the bad, can be 
considered supreme. 

When transferred to the field of religion, this opposi- 
tion becomes actual conflict. The world becomes the 
scene of mortal combat. The devil is the incarnation 
of the principle of disorder, evil, and sin — he is the 
anti-social and anti-ethical ideal. He brings his 
cohorts with him and establishes in the world an annex 
to the inferno, the kingdom of evil. But he is not a 
being equal to God, not a peer of Divinity, but a pres- 
ence which has been many times routed and which will 
be finally crushed, as in the splendid apocalyptic vision 
of Saint John. The devil is a sort of cosmic opposition 
party which must be kept strong and effective, a thorn 
in the side of the good; it can never, however, be more 
than just-short of supreme. 

We find, therefore, that the negative ideal, a fully 
malignant character, a devilish god, is not and can not 
be assumed to exist as a fact ; it is only a simulacrum, a 
semblant being, victory over whom for good and all 



Religious Reality and Negation 137 

would destroy evil and bad values of every kind. But 
the bad values continue to exist, and the devil is as- 
sumed to impersonate them. 

In other words, put technically, the existence of 
the ideal personality or God, destroys the pretended 
actuality of the other and opposed ideal, the bad-spirit, 
the personal devil. 

19. It is only in a state of religious development 
akin to polytheism, or in an atmosphere of religious 
dogmatism that stifles reflection, that belief in an 
actually existing devil of this semi-divine kind is to 
be found. ^ The deity of the primitive tribe is one 
among many, each of which is represented as guarding 
the interests of his own tribe and being guarded in 
turn by it; he is represented as sacred for his people 
and supreme; although for others he is a false god, 
a profane belief, a rival. In more advanced culture, 
God is made a personality of so concrete and human a 
nature that his life is looked upon as one of struggle, 
of alternating victory and defeat, achievement for and 
with his people. The enemy, in this case, is the actual 
devil; not merely the god of another tribe, but an evil 
person having many of the attributes of divinity and 
capable of coping with the God himself, though at a 
disadvantage. In both these cases, the ideal has not 

' We have noted above in passing the fact of the "diffusion of sacred- 
ness" over a wide range of things related to rehgion. It is a phe- 
nomenon of the transfer of interest when emotional and imaginative 
factors are dominant. In primitive life, it is very marked: everything 
at all connected with religion comes to reflect its values. Even with 
Christianity, we have the "sacred book" kissed in the law courts, bib- 
lical stories, even when immoral, read in open church services as "sacred 
lessons, " chapters of profane and vulgar Jewish history incorporated in 
the "sacred text," and even the devil treated with marked respect as 
belonging in the region of sacred things. One must not swear by the 
name of the devil, as he must not by the name of God! 



138 Genetic Interpretation 

yet attained that exclusive statement which forbids 
the supposition of a second divine or semi-divine person, 
a rival to the deity. 

20. The recurring concept of the devil serves to set 
forth most plainly the antinomy between the ideal and 
the actual inherent in the religious postulate as such. 
If the demand for actuality be taken literally, so literally 
as to carry the assumption of the existence of the devil, 
the ideal finds itself mutilated: the bad becomes actual 
fellow to the good. If, on the other hand, the ideality 
of God be consistently affirmed, the marks of actuality 
are one by one effaced. The essential postulate rests 
in the region of faith, by which the divine is accepted 
as both actual and ideal. But the contradiction is 
lessened and the antinomy made less embarrassing 
for reflection, if while the possibility of lesser spirits 
of both sorts be allowed, that of the arch-devil be 
disallowed. The semi-divine and the semi-devilish 
may exist; but the supremely bad, co-ordinate with 
the supremely good, can not exist. 

§7. The Philosophy of Religion: Religion as organ of 

Value 

21. It would seem, finally, that the philosophical 
views known variously as religious realism, moralism, 
and theism, so far as they recognise as valid the postu- 
late of a supreme and ideal personal God, can not be 
pluralistic. If this postulate is to be honoured in our 
reflection, it must be on its own terms; namely, the 
existence of an ideal which asserts itself by selective 
exclusion. Other personalities good and bad, other 
things secular and profane, may exist in the same 
universe with God, but not other equal spiritual ideals. 



Religious Reality and Negation 139 

This is the monistic basis upon which alone a spiritual- 
istic philosophy of religion can be constructed. 

On the other hand, to accept a religious pluralism 
or polytheism — any form of plurality of good and bad 
spirits contending or allied inter se on equal terms — 
is to go back to the earlier anthropomorphic stages in 
which the religious ideal itself involved a plurality of 
personal agencies, existing in relation to one another. 
This is the basis of a theory of pluralistic realism or 
moralism. 

These two alternatives reflect respectively the terms 
of the essential antinomy of religion as spoken of above, 
ideality and actuality. 

22. The meaning of religion for our further thought 
is now fairly plain. It is an interest in which the ear- 
liest collective and personal values of human life were 
organised, and in which also the later human values 
receive a synthetic and ideal statement.^ God is the 
final and comprehensive value of the life of feeling and 
will; and as reality, this postulate gives concreteness 
to the ideal contained in the whole series of social 
and moral values. In this consists the dual claim 
of religion — not entirely made out as we have seen — 
to be the organ of the most profound apprehension of 
the nature of things. But apart from this claim we 
may say that it represents the type of reality found in 
value, carried on to infinity. 

I Cf . Hoffding, Philosophy of Religion. 



CHAPTER VIII 

LOGICAL INTERPRETATION 

§ I. The transition to Logic: the role of the Imagination 

THE transition in individual development from the 
prelogical to the logical, from the emotional to 
the theoretical interpretation, has already been touched 
upon. It is a movement in which the factors of emo- 
tional and collective interest gradually give way to 
those of thought. Exact observation, judgment, proof, 
come to a greater or lesser degree into their own. 

I. We should recall here two points which are nec- 
essary to the understanding of the corresponding 
historical movement. 

(i) In the passage from the prelogical to the logical 
type of knowledge, the imagination is the constant 
instrument. It establishes semblant combinations, 
schematic programmes, constructions of fancy, which 
present the tentative outlines from which the confirmed 
judgments of fact and truth are to be developed. By 
the schematising imagination, the materials of know- 
ledge are released from the grasp of external and social 
control, and made available for reconstruction in 
experimental hypotheses and aesthetic unities. 

In the function of play in childhood this imaginative 
semblance notably appears. The impulse to play 
shows itself in the exercise of untrammelled fancy. 

140 



The Transition to Logic 141 

The legend, the fairy tale, the dramatic incident of the 
school or the voyage, the detail of personal display or 
patriotic pride, all give occasion to a literal play of 
the imagination, from which the new freedom of thought 
is to emerge. The playful creation of fancy yields to 
the ready assumption, this to the sober hypothesis, 
and this in turn to the grounded proposal and the per- 
fected theory. Thus the gains of knowledge become 
constantly the starting point of the imagination, tmtil 
the ideals of truth and right and beauty are projected 
forward in the postulates of reason, duty, and God. 

(2) In the outcome the great dualism of spheres, 
inner and outer, is established in which these imagina- 
tive programmes find themselves alternatively con- 
trolled, corrected, and confirmed. Mind and body, the 
spiritual and the physical world, take their place as 
opposing substances existing over against each other. 

2. The same typical processes stand out in the 
movement of racial interpretation. ^ 

(i) The outstanding characters, as we have seen, of 
primitive or prelogical racial thought appear in the 
prevalence of collective or emotional interest, and 
the dominance of mystical and religious motives in 
the interpretation of things generally. It is in these in- 
terests, in the bosom of social and religious concerns and 
observances, that the racial imagination stirs to produce 
safer and saner knowledge. In the social festivity, 
the dance, the game, having musical and ceremonial 
accompaniments, we find in savage life the outlet to 
emotion and caprice. In the license of the religious 
festival the bondage to social form, so compelling in all 
the details of serious life, is temporarily broken. The 

' Cf. for detail the interpretation contained in the writer's History oj 
Psychology, vols, i., ii. 



142 Genetic Interpretation 

most stringent regulations ma}'- be relaxed, the most 
serious lapses condoned ' ; even that which is customarily 
forbidden may be permitted or enjoined in the excep- 
tional usages of the festival. 

3. (2) Further, on these occasions, the imagination 
has a certain inventive role. The procedure follows 
a dramatic and serial order, as embodying a story or 
a series of cosmic or epic events. A mass of symbolic 
meaning is organised playfully, symbolically, or dra- 
matically, just as is the case also in the playful drama- 
tisation of civilised children's games. 

In this there is a release of the motives of individu- 
alism. A greater freedom arises for the exercise of 
individual thought and imagination; an impulse as- 
serts itself toward the explanation of things, in the 
whole range of nature and mind. 

4. In religion, these movements take on permanent 
and semi-logical form. The religious life seeks symbolic 
embodiments, since it carries in it the beginnings of cos- 
mology and theology. Hence the rise of myths and of 
mythical interpretations of nature in terms of religion : 
mythical cosmic events celebrating religious or national 
heroes, mythical accounts of supernatural situations 
by which the natural are explained. In the my- 
thology of many religions, and in the sacred books 
of many others, we find the racial imagination making 
out its programmes, arranging its schemata, presenting 
its explanations, in the direction of a logical and reason- 
able understanding of the world. As in the individual, 
so here, the imagination entertains as plausible, prob- 
able, as-if-actual, what may turn out to be logically 
unreasonable or physically impossible. For in this 
its early r61e, the imaginative interpretation continues 

' Such, for example, as those of sexual restraint. 



The Transition to Logic 143 

to serve the ends of social tradition and religious dogma. 
The myth is apologetic of faith, even when explanatory 
of nature. The great events of the world are explained 
by beings and forces of which religion gives the true 
account. The promise of God after the flood explains 
the rainbow, as the resting of God on the seventh day 
explains the Jewish sabbath and with it the length of 
the seven-day week. ^ 

5. This first resort to a mode of individual thought, 
imaginative and uncontrolled as it is, is in itself a 
notable achievement. Besides having instrumental 
value, as leading on to logical process, it throws the mat- 
ter of representation into aesthetic and poetic wholes. 
Even when more sober scientific observation has 
superseded it, in the direction of a cosmology or a 
psychology, it still remains, maintaining itself as a realm 
of free fancy, of poetic creation. The myths of the 
seasons and of other recurring events of nature, of the 
rising and setting sun, of the movements of the heavenly 
bodies, of the origin of heaven and earth, of the music 
of the spheres, are epic poems in which the dramatis 
personcB are cosmic forces personated by gods and 
heroes. What is more beautiful than the story of the 
rainbow, that wondrous bow above the cloud, which 
records, in the presence of the sun, rising resplendent 
with all his joyous gifts of light and warmth, the divine 
pledge to dispel the mists and stay the flood! Or the 

^ In the successive volumes of Frazer's great work, The Golden Bough, 
3rd ed., we have presented to us certain typical motives which are re- 
current in religious myth and story (such as that of substitutive or 
vicarious sacrifice in Partvi, "The Scape-Goat"). These imaginative 
ways of interpreting social rules and religious usages in semi-logical 
form and in semblance of external fact, and of thus satisfying the 
curiosities of a too-prying faith, constitute a wonderful chapter in the 
true romance of thought. 



144 Genetic Interpretation 

myth of the six-day creation, according to which the 
Lord rested the seventh day, viewing the finished work 
of his hands, contemplating the perfection of that 
world in which his infinite wisdom and will were em- 
bodied! Greek mythology has served as a body of 
symbolic material from which the greatest artistic 
geniuses of all ages have chosen their noblest themes. 

This latter, the intrinsic cesthetic value of the myth, 
has not had proper recognition. It is not only true 
that the imagination serves as an instrument to know- 
ledge, by freeing the motives of individual thought and 
by prospecting for the objective and real; it is equally 
true that its constructions may not have such ends in 
view, but may constitute a mode of interpretation 
having independent meaning. 

Here, in the race as in the individual, the resort 
is to a realm in which the mind escapes in some meas- 
ure from the controls, social, factual, moral, of the 
serious and prosaic life, and feels itself allied with 
the mystic and romantic forces and beings of another 
world. The moral meaning of the rainbow is as high, 
and the lesson of its presence as inspiring, after the 
laws of scientific optics have come to replace the fiat 
of a personal creator. The interpretation due to 
poetic vision is reconstituted after every new discovery 
by which scientific truth is at once dislocated and re- 
articulated. The lengthening of the six creative days 
into geological periods, whatever scientific advantage 
it may have, does not impair the wonders of the crea- 
tion as presented to the eye of contemplation. The 
starry heavens were the object of the same wonder to 
Immanuel Kant as to Pythagoras. The legends of 
the fall and redemption of man are semblant pictures, 
aesthetic figures, depicting inexpressible things, in the 



The Transition to Logic 145 

same sense as the Gothic cathedral and the solemnly- 
worded Confession of Faith. Religion appeals to art, 
of which the myth is an early form, to present the 
divine-human drama to the eye. And this semblant 
picture, presented to faith and contemplation, is not 
merely a temporary substitute for a fully rational 
account; it is a permanent rendering of ideals in forms 
with which the logical dispenses, but which never- 
theless hold their own in human thought. 

6. The outcome on the side of theoretical interpreta- 
tion is the dualism of mind and body, stated consciously 
as an opposition between the immaterial or spiritual 
and the material or physical. The doctrine of the 
soul in primitive thought did not realise this distinction 
fully. The notion of a conscious spiritual principle, 
the reason, different in nature from matter, did not 
arise in Greek philosophy; it became clear only in the 
writings of Saint Augustine. In Descartes it was for the 
first time made the presupposition of a logical inter- 
pretation of the world. 

Allowing this brief sketch to stand as sufficient for 
our present purposes, we may now enquire as to the 
character of the logical interpretation which comes 
with the rise of conscious reflection. 

§ 2. The Prohlem of Reflection 

7. With the passing of the explicitly theological 
period of human interest, the religious point of view, 
which carried with it in early times the collective and 
emotional, yielded in this sphere and that to the secular 
and the intellectual. Industry, politics, science, art, 
each had to achieve a relative independence, as repre- 
senting a vital interest of mankind. And while these 



146 Genetic Interpretation 

interests have never entirely superseded the religious 
in its own sphere, still they have succeeded in dividing 
the territory in such a way that conflicts are avoided, 
and problems are met by resort to distinctive and 
appropriate methods. Industrial methods no longer 
comprise sacrifice to the wind-gods, nor do political 
methods recognise theocracy and the right of divine 
interference. Likewise in the realm of knowledge and 
practice, a technology had to be worked out to replace 
that of religious rite and magical ceremonial. ^ 

8, The Greek period was of great importance in 
this respect. It saw the gradual evolution of the prob- 
lems of reflection, notably the problems arising about 
the relation of mind and body. And it served to teach 
the race with what instruments the mind might, in its 
own right, approach the world to understand and 
subjugate it. Prudence in practice, formal logic, 
resignation, moderation, scornful irony, subtle spec- 
ulation, aesthetic intuition — all these, besides religious 
veneration and collective piety, were in turn the means 
by which the individual nourished his hope and re- 
newed his courage in confronting the world. 

In the result, we find modern philosophy starting 
out with a fairly definite programme. The alter- 
natives of thought were given in the terms of the Car- 
tesian dualism^; and those of method were anticipated, 

' It is hard to overestimate the importance of method or technique 
everywhere, or the difficulty of destroying a false technique when it is 
entrenched in social and practical interests, and when there is no ade- 
quate procedure at hand to replace it. Rather than do nothing to avert 
disaster or to assure the favour of fortune, men will continue to do what 
they no longer believe in. 

* In the little work cited {History of Psychology, vol. i., London ed.. 
p. 95 ff.) the relation of Cartesian to later speculation is stated as 
follows: "The terms of the distinction between mind and body being 



The Transition to Logic 147 

if not clearly formulated, in the directions of physical 
science, on the one hand, and philosophical speculation, 
on the other hand. Mind and body were the two 
realms in which science was to develop into the sciences ; 
and these were also the sorts of existence or reality 
which philosophy was called upon to interpret. 

In these terms the thought of the race formulated 
the opposition between the two substances or kinds of 
reality, much as the individual also formulates it, 
proceeding upon the two controls, inner and outer, 
found operative always in experience. 

9. Further, it is clear that the movements of indi- 
vidual thought which issue in these two types of exist- 
ence, suggest the methods which reflection employs 
to interpret them. The movement of knowledge 
proper is experimental, positive, confirmatory; by it 
the sphere of the actual is established and extended. 
This becomes the method of science, broadly defined. 
On the other hand, the movement by which practice 
develops, securing gratifications, defining values, erect- 
ing ideals, remains that of interest and sentiment, 
motived by utility and satisfaction. Both of these 

now understood . . . speculation takes the form of an interpretation 
of this duaUsm itself. If we look upon the earlier thought as being a 
spontaneous or direct consideration of nature and man, we may look 
upon the latter as being a reflection upon the result of this former think- 
ing. The dualism itself becomes a presupposition or datum; its terms 
condition the further problem. How can mind and matter both exist 
and give the appearance of interaction? — which of the two is the prius 
of the other? 

"These questions as now formulated show later thought to be an 
interpretation of dualism, as the earlier was an interpretation of the world 
issuing in dualism. While the ancient and medieval philosophies 
developed a progressive distinction and finally a divorce between body 
and mind, the modern results in a series of attempts to accommodate them 
to each other again in a single cosmic household." 



148 Genetic Interpretation 

are taken up in reflection and developed in theories 
which define reality respectivelj^ in terms of actuality, 
in the forms of fact, truth, rational coherence, and of 
ideality, in the forms of the good, the beautiful, God. 
The one type of theory turns upon truth, the other 
upon value. 

§j. Logical Theories: Scheme of Treatment 

10. In these several types of reflection the methods 
and results of spontaneous thought are taken up and 
justified. The actual is reached by the reflective re- 
cognition of the control, external or internal, in which 
spontaneous thought finds its trans-subjective reference. 
The spheres of the external and internal reference of 
ideas, the realms which this and that experience mediate, 
become the realities of the corresponding modes of 
reflection. The actual is thus manifold: physical, 
mental, conceptual, relational, and other. All these 
modes of actuality are confirmed by reflection, after 
being achieved by the processes of prelogical inter- 
pretation. 

So, too, of reality of the ideal type ; it has its reflective 
forms following upon the prelogical forms. The ideal 
is a further worth suggested and mediated by the 
present fact or idea. It becomes the reflective as 
before it was the distant and perhaps unconscious goal. 
There are, accordingly, ideals physical, mental, moral, 
social, religious. The reality reached by idealisation 
has many forms, as that reached by processes of 
actualisation also has. 

11. In the history of reflection, great systems of 
thought have arisen based respectively on one or other 
of these alternatives. Theories which confine reality 



The Transition to Logic 149 

to the actual are Materialism, realistic Spiritualism, 
Rationalism (in some of its forms), Positivism, Natural- 
ism. On the other hand, the theories whose corner- 
stone reposes on ideality are Voluntarism, Theism, 
Pragmatism, Moralism, ^stheticism. '^ 

12. Instead of recognising as valid the results and 
methods of spontaneous thought, however, reflection 
may criticise or in some way alter them by i,ts inter- 
pretations. In fact, in recognising and justifying the 
two great modes of mediation — mediation of truth 
and mediation of value — reflection already renders a 
criticism, although in the first instance favourable. 
But such criticism may, on various grounds, issue in 
the denial of the validity of one or other or both of 
these mediations and attempt an adjustment of their 
results in a larger synthesis; or it may reject the pre- 
suppositions on which they proceed. In this last case, 
we find a more or less explicit resort to immediacy: a 
reflective justification of the sorts of apprehension in 
which consciousness seems to realise the existent with- 
out having resort to any process, either discursive or 
teleological, involving representation by ideas. The 
real may be that which most fully and directly realise, 
rather than that which we can prove or that which we 
desiderate as gratifying. Instead of the experience 

^ One would naturally use the term "idealism" for this entire group 
of theories, were it not for its ambiguity. Idealism is widely used for 
theories of the rationalist or intellectualist type in which reality is 
mediated through "ideas"; thus understood, it is equivalent to "idea"- 
ism. Cf. the note to § lo of chap. x. In this sense, idealism falls in 
our group of actuality theories. 

The ideality theories — the true "ideal "-isms — are generally less one- 
sided than the actuality theories, since it is harder to deny the actual in 
maintaining the ideal, than it is to deny the ideal in maintaining the 
actual. Being less synthetic and comprehensive, on the other hand, the 
actuality theories are truer to type. 



150 Genetic Interpretation 

in which ideas are actualised or that in which values 
are idealised, that which most fully reveals to us the 
inner nature of things is the experience in which the 
meaning of things is directly realised, 

13. This is the motive of a further group of philo- 
sophical theories : a motive, however, not always clearly 
defined or unambiguous. The sorts of immediate ex- 
perience resorted to differ in type and in value. We 
have before distinguished^ three modes of immediacy, 
each having its peculiar place in mental development: 
the immediacy of " primitiveness " (as in sensation), 
that of fulfilment or "transcendence" (as in intuition), 
and that of "reconciliation" or synthesis (as in aesthetic 
contemplation). Each of these has been taken, in 
some historical theory, to be the most important or 
the only mode of apprehending the truly real. 

Such theories may be classed together as "affectiv- 
istic" in opposition to those based on knowledge and 
will, which are called intellectual and voluntaristic. 
Among them we may cite Sensationalism, Intuition- 
ism, Mysticism, Mystic Pantheism, -Esthetic Immedi- 
atism or Pancalism. 

14. We find, in short, in the development of specu- 
lative theory, the recognition in turn of each of the 
great modes of mental function as being fundamentally 
determining, in the apprehension of reality. Knowledge, 
will, and feeling become, each in turn, the recognised 
organ of the true experience of the real. The actualising 
experience is one of knowledge, the idealising experience 
is one of will, the realising experience is one of feeling. 

It would seem then that, historically considered, 
speculative thought has allowed, tacitly or avowedly, 
the presupposition that it is in a mode of experi- 

' Thought and Things, vol. iii., " Interest and Art, " chap. xiv. 



The Transition to Logic 151 

ence, or through consciousness, that reality reveals itself. 
We may say that this is true without doubt. The sub- 
jective point of view, reached in the Socratic period 
and consciously adopted in the Cartesian, has remained 
the starting point of the theory of reality, as it is the 
presupposition of the judgment of existence. A theory 
may refuse to admit this and attempt to construe 
reality as something quite apart from consciousness 
or knowledge; but in that case it must still postulate 
a principle — that of matter, or that of mind, or that 
of God — the meaning of which can be determined only 
in human experience. Such a principle loses all deter- 
mination and value for theory apart from experience. 
The "infinitely infinite," the "unknowable," the 
nirvanas, are not positive principles, but ontological 
postulates formed in advance to meet the exigencies 
of abstract thought. This remains, however, to be 
taken up again in our later discussions. 

15. The foregoing division of theories may be 
presented to the eye in the following table, which will 
serve to guide us in the brief expositions and criticisms 
that follow. 

TABLE III. THEORIES OF REALITY 

L Actualisation theories, 
finding reality in facts, 
truths, principles. 
II. Idealisation theories, find- 
ing reality in ends, 
values, norms. 

B. IMMEDIACY THEORIES III. Realisation theories, find- 
ing reality in direct ful- 
filments.* 

^ In lieu of a better, I employ this term, "direct fulfilment," for the 
content of immediate realisation. 



MEDIATION THEORIES J 



CHAPTER IX 

LOGICAL INTERPRETATION: MEDIATION THEORIES 

§1. Actuality Theories: Intellectualism 

I . The process of mediation upon which knowledge 
proceeds has been described by many writers.^ It 
issues in the establishment of the objects of know- 
edge in certain spheres of existence and under a re- 
stricted control. In each case, there is a coefficient 
or sign attaching to the mediating presentation or idea, 
upon which its assignment to one or other of these 
spheres proceeds. The idea of an orange mediates 
the real external thing. Thus systems of realities are 
built up, toward which the knower is led to take atti- 
tudes of acceptance, acknowledgment, and beHef. 

So far as this system of mediations is concerned, the 
same is true of values or worths considered as existing 
and actual. The idea of a present fact mediates the 
satisfaction associated with it and reached when the 
thing itself is attained. The idea of the orange medi- 
ates not only the actual orange as a thing, but also 
the pleasure of eating the orange. The coefficient of 
existence is the same for the thing as for its predicated 
worth.* 

' See Thought and Things, vol. ii., chap, xiv., and vol. iii., chaps. 
ill., iv. 

^ Ibid., vol. iii., chap, v., § 2. 

152 



Mediation Theories 153 

By the actual, then, we mean a mode of reality 
reached by processes of actualising; and these processes 
are those of mediation through ideas. Its most elabor- 
ate and explicit form is reached in the discursive 
processes of the logical mode, which proceed by experi- 
mentation and proof. The astronomical body is made 
actual when its possible existence, anticipated by the 
hypothesis which states the mediating ideas or facts, 
is experimentally confirmed or logically proved. 

2. It is true, however, that all knowledge, all cogni- 
tive apprehension, not merely that of logical process 
proper, involves the process of mediation more or less 
explicitly. A thing recognised as what it is and 
nothing else is always made up or constructed, "actual- 
ised" in a word, in a control which makes of it a fact 
or truth. As actual, it is always a ''what, " never a 
mere "that."^ 

The sphere of existence to which it is referred is 
accepted as proper to it ; and the stage, higher or lower, 
at which it is found depends upon the relative develop- 
ment of the mind. It ranges from the presumption 
of mere reality-feeling to the assurance of explicit 
judgment and conscious belief. 

On this showing, theories which interpret the world 
in terms of the actual, limit the real to that which is 
accepted with some show of confirmation; the real is 

' See Thought and Things, vol. i., chap. iii. It may be objected that 
our most intimate sense of actuality is present in cases of direct experi- 
ence or immediate presence, when there is httle or no cognitive process. 
This is in a sense true ; but when it is true, the case is one of immediacy 
(to be treated below), in which there is for consciousness no question 
of actuality or lack of it. In immediate experience we do not actualise 
or make actual; we merely find what is present, by contact with it. 
In this connection, therefore, we restrict the term actual to that which 
is actualised, that which is taken up, accepted, or found to be actual. 



154 Genetic Interpretation 

that which is established in a control — external, inner, 
etc. They limit reality, in other terms, to the outcome 
of knowledge. These we may call "actuality " theories. 

3. One may, of course, go further and prefer one 
mode of control and one type of knowledge to others; 
and so restrict reality to that which has a certain sort 
of actuality. The theory then becomes more special, 
as in materialism, or again in spiritualism, or yet again 
in rationalism, and in intellectualism imderstood in a 
narrow sense. But for our present purposes, these 
may all be classed together as theories based upon the 
same presupposition: the presupposition, namely, that 
the attitude of acceptance which acknowledges reality 
is peculiar to those functions by which an idea or other 
mental content is confirmed in a control or sphere of 
existence. This attitude begins with the mere presump- 
tion of the child's trust and the savage's credulity; 
becomes belief when judgment arises to reaffirm and 
extend the objective system of things; and later on 
lapses into the presupposition that lies behind those 
operations which extend the established system of 
knowledge. It is an attitude of knowledge — of confi- 
dence, confirmation, assertion — as opposed to that 
of question, assumption, hypothesis. The actual — 
whether physical thing, economic value, moral situation, 
religious truth — is something grounded in observation, 
demonstration, or knowledge. The statement "it is 
actually so," is the end of dispute. 

Applying the term intellectualism to this group of 
theories — seeing their exclusive appeal to the processes 
of knowledge — we may now enquire whether they give 
a satisfactory account of reality; whether, that is, the 
interpretation they present is successful in adjusting 
all the genetic motives of apprehension. 



Mediation Theories 155 

§ 2. Examination of Intellectualism 

4. Before considering the special forms that intel- 
lectualism takes on, we may point out certain general 
difficulties under which it labours when considered from 
our genetic point of view.^ 

(i) It is clear that to accept as final the view that 
all reality is present in the actual, as reported by the 
intelligence, is to deny to all modes of function other 
than that of knowledge the r61e of reaching or enjoy- 
ing reality. This denial extends, of course, to the 
fiinction of idealisation, by which further value is at- 
tributed to the existent or actual and the true, over 
and above their properties of actuality ; as, for example, 
the ideal values attaching to moral and religious objects. 
It also refuses to recognise as real certain contents of 
immediate experience, in which we seem to attain a 
direct realisation or assurance. All the revelations, in 
fact, of feeling as such have to be submitted to the dis- 
cursive tests of knowledge. Recognising that in these 
cases we are dealing with values, this criticism amounts 
to the statement that the theory of intellectualism does 
not provide for the reality of a large group of values. 

5. Such an intellectualistic attitude could be justi- 
fied in this regard only if some motive appeared in the 
development of the object, in the course of experience, 
by which the functions of idealisation and direct reali- 
sation were subordinated and made instrumental to 
knov\^ledge or thought.^ This is the claim made by a 

^ In what follows the attempt Is made merely to show in what respects 
the theories considered meet, or fail to meet, the conditions imposed 
by our genetic method and suggested by our results. 

== As would be the case if all appreciations as such could be rendered 
in judgments of truth or fact. Cf. the discussion of Urban, Valuation, 
etc., chap. xiv. 



156 Genetic Interpretation 

certain form of rationalistic theory. But we find, on 
close examination, that the processes of mediation of 
values as ends, through ideas taken as means, and 
indeed the entire organisation and logic of interest, are 
dynamic and autotelic processes.^ They are not sub- 
mitted to the domination of the intelligence. They 
do not rest content with the acceptance of fact, or the 
discovery of truth by processes of reasoning. So far 
from finding their demands fulfilled in the establish- 
ment of the actual, they go on to erect ideals and 
establish norms which transcend the categories of 
thought. It is only as the scaffolding of relational 
statement falls away, as in the realisation of God in the 
religious life, that the independent worth of the ideal 
for feeling and will is discovered. 

6. (2) Not only do the active processes refuse to 
submit to the yoke of the intellect, but analysis reveals 
positive elements in all our worlds of reality — physical, 
moral, social — which are not cognitive: elements seem- 
ing to come immediately from direct contact with 
things, or seeming to be achieved only by effort and 
struggle. We have elsewhere^ shown that the limits 
of knowledge are reached and passed in experiences of 
singularity, on the one hand, and in those of universal- 
ity, on the other hand. The singular escapes general- 
isation and resists relational construction; it comes as 
an immediate realisation. Every experience of exclu- 
sive interest — the child's kiss, the drunkard's cup, the 
image present to the gaze of the devotee — gives a sense 
of reality more intimate than that of all the proofs of 
logic. 

^ See Thought and Things, vol. iii., chaps, vi., vil. 
^ See the summary given in the chapter on "The Embarrassments 
of Thought," in Thought and Things (chap. xv. of vol. ii.). 



Mediation Theories 157 

Further, the universal and necessary can not be proved 
to be real; they are assumed or postulated to be so, by 
a movement which establishes an ideal, even in the realm 
of the actual. ^ Moreover, the universals of the different 
spheres of truth, conduct, religion, etc., become relative 
to one another as soon as these spheres are considered 
as constituting a whole of reality. ^ 

7. (3) A further objection to the theory which 
considers knowledge as the exclusive organ of the ap- 
prehension of reality, appears when we examine the 
type of construction produced by knowledge or thought. 
It renders those relations of identity, similarity, and 
recurrence which take on the form of generalisation. 
Even the identification of the singular object as the 
same requires a generalisation of its recurrent appear- 
ances in the mind of the one person.^ This requires 
and assumes a certain fixity and constancy in the data 
of knowledge; for the confirmation of the results must 
be possible, both by the one person and by all. In the 
result, we have the notion or concept, which is in its 
intent, and in the verbal symbol which expresses it, 
fixed and invariable, however much the cases it covers 
may vary among themselves in other respects. Only 
on this assumption of fixity and constancy can the 
processes of discursive thought go on. The truth 
reached by such knowledge is therefore of a conceptual 
and relational character, reporting only those aspects 

^ It is only by reason of the historical confusion of "reason" with 
"reasoning" or thought that the immediate intuitions of pure and 
practical reason are claimed by thought at all. If we should use the 
term thinking always instead of thought, the confusion which arises 
from our denoting universal and necessary principles of reason by the 
term "thought" would become evident. 

' See Thought and Things, vol. ii., chap, xiii., § 7. 

* Ibid., vol. ii., chap, x., § 6. 



158 Genetic Interpretation 

of the real which can be summarised and communicated 
in verbal symbols. 

We have seen that this relational and abstract 
character of knowledge does not vitiate it; at the worst, 
it merely renders it partial and in a certain sense remote 
from the data of immediate apprehension.^ Even the 
advocates of radically pragmatic theories admit that 
knowledge does serve its purpose, as an instrument of 
life and practice. It is then so far valid for the pur- 
poses of the active life, even in cases in which its limi- 
tations are recognised. Whatever reality may be in 
its completeness, it must have aspects, as it would 
appear, which are capable of taking on the general and 
conceptual forms of knowledge. This is brought out 
more fully below. 

8. The general point is well taken, however, to the 
effect that knowledge does not exhaust our apprehen- 
sion of reality. The singular and immediate, the con- 
tents of affective and active consciousness, do not 
lend themselves to its processes. Reality in certain 
of its modes does not present itself in isolated "cases," 
or recurrent bits, among which relations may be dis- 
covered or established. On the contrary, it presents itself 
as flowing, moving continuously, having a dynamic 
motive in its progress. In the inner world, the self is 
not a series of detached experiences, but a persisting 
presence always moving and changing, although always 
apprehended as the same. Its marks are those of a 
continuity which shows qualitative change ; the opposite 
of the discontinuity and qualitative identity of the 
objects established by thought. To the development 
of practical meaning in general, therefore, it is found 
impossible to apply the conceptual machinery of cogni- 

^ Thought and Things, vol. iii., chap, iv., § 2. 



Mediation Theories 159 

tive logic. The classes reached are too indefinite, the 
conclusions too indecisive, the mutations too facile, 
and the contents too relative. "^ 

These properties of the affective life are so well 
known that intellectualism. itself cites them in favour 
of its thesis. Feeling and action, it is said, are too 
unorganised and irresponsible to report the real. But 
such a conclusion follows only on the assumption that 
reality is of the fixed and static nature suited to intel- 
lectual apprehension merely. In case of the contrary, 
or in case of a partial unfitness of reality for intellectual 
categorising, it may be that feeling, under certain con- 
ditions, gives us part, and the best part, of the real. 
In that quality in which reality does not stand still 
long enough to be photographed, or does not recur 
plainly or frequently enough to take on the moulds of 
thought, feeling alone could secure our contact with it. 

9. (4) Another limitation upon knowledge as such 
appears in the fact that all knowledge is in its nature 
"common," in some sense social, as has been abundantly 
shown in detail.^ It is common in the sense of being 
open to more than one knower. This is of interest 
at once for the theory of knowledge and for that of 
reality. The common character begins with the aggre- 
gateness of different persons' perceptions, and advances 
by stages up to the completely "synnomic" community 
of judgment and theoretical reason. Knowledge differs 
from feeling and will in this, that its common strain of 
meaning is reflected in the object itself whose very 
constitution and control give all men the right to find 
it to be what the one person declares. It is part of its 
intent to hold for the experience of all; and it is not 

^ See Thought and Things, vol. iii., chap. vii. 

^ See ihid., vol. i., chap, vii., and vol. ii., chap. iii. 



i6o Genetic Interpretation 

knowledge unless it has this intent. The control of 
knowledge establishes the trans-subjective reference; 
and externality once established, repeated perception 
of the same thing or object is guaranteed. 

If this is true, cognitive processes can not report 
that which is essentially private, personal, intimate.^ 
Any aspect of reality which is not capable of being 
publicly inspected and found to exist independently 
of subjective interest and choice, is beyond their reach. 
In this again an advantage is claimed for knowledge. 
This quahty is openly exploited by its advocates; its 
results are free, we are told, from personal caprice, 
private interest, subjective illusion. By it reality is 
once for all defined in disinterested and impersonal 
form. 

lo. This is very true; but it again assumes that all 
reality is of such a type. It denies or neglects those 
marks of reality which appear in the privacy of the 
single person's appreciation. It treats consciousness 
as a sort of reflector of a reality which is apart from it. 
The reflector is good because it gives consistent pictures 
of the objects exposed before it. The question of the 
reality of the mind itself is resolved into this — how far 
it too can be accurately reflected in the mirror of 
knowledge. 

We find reason to think, however, that the inner 
world is real in that it fills an intimate and vital role 
of its own. Its primary apprehension of itself seems to 
be direct, not reflected. In the inner realm there is a 
series of immediate contacts, revealing values, serving 

^ Thought and Things, vol. ii., chap, xiv., §§4 ff. We have seen that 
the generalisation of recurrent affective states in dispositions and 
attitudes lacks the external points of reference by which judgments of 
fact are socially confirmed. {Ibid., vol. iii., chap, vii., § 2.) 



Mediation Theories i6i 

appreciations, establishing goods, which reveal some- 
thing more than the properties of the actual given by 
knowledge. To be sure, knowledge does lend itself 
to the task of making general and public, in judgments 
of right, taste, etc., the values of the private life, but 
vainly, for the most part. And back of these inade- 
quate renderings, the entire inner world, with its first- 
hand values, its felt persistences, its active efforts, its 
moral goods, remains a standing refutation of the 
monopolistic claim made on behalf of knowledge in the 
intellectualistic theory. 

In the logical stage of knowledge or thought, in 
which conscious reflection appears, it would seem that 
the entire self might be finally apprehended by know- 
ledge. We do commonly say that we know the self, 
comparing it possibly with our other past and dead 
selves, or bemoaning its shortcomings in the moral 
order. But apart from the limitations actually present 
upon this sort of apprehension, ^ we find that here still 
the entire function has the presupposition of the inner 
sphere in which it takes place — the background or 
theatre of knowledge itself. This remains true even for 
the pure presentational or Herbartian theorist. What- 
ever influence the transition from direct to reflective 
knowledge may have upon our interpretation, it would 
be in the direction of introducing a factor of subjectiv- 
ism into all reality; it would not tend to place new 
emphasis upon knowledge or thought as such. The 
inner life is given to us as a mode of actuality; but it 
has the nature of an immediacy, and as such it tmderlies 
the mediating processes of reflection. 

The objective self that we judge, describe, and esti- 

^See on the "Apprehension of Immediacy," Thought and Things, 
vol. iii., chap, xiv., § 6. 



i62 Genetic Interpretation 

mate is mediated by various partial and detached ideas ; 
as object of reflection, it is a construction. Over 
against this, however, stands always the subject of 
reflection, an immediate process, a continuing inner 
control. 

11. All these criticisms of intellectualism, and of the 
view of actuality that goes with it, seem to come back, 
finally, to the analysis of knowledge itself. In every 
case of knowledge, there is along with the external and 
convertible skeleton of fact or truth, an element of 
interest, a personal intent, which is a constituent part 
of the whole. The mere fact, the bare neutral truth, 
is always an abstraction, serving to set the element of 
external control apart from the appreciating and de- 
termining interest, without which the object would 
not be what it is. But even for purposes of abstraction, 
the other pole of the knowledge relation is in evidence. 
Over against the external fact, the inner life reveals 
itself. In order to establish the neutrality of the object, 
science ignores the mass of pertinent worths. In this 
way science makes its own arbitrary measure of reality, 
and estimates all reality by this measure. Of course 
it finds what it looks for. 

12. It should be noted especially, however, that 
these arguments, admitting their full force, do not 
disprove the validity or impair the value of knowledge. 
At most, they limit its scope and define its r61e. The 
advocate of actuality still has his feet firmly planted 
on the solid ground of the control found in knowledge. 
He says rightly that all confirmed reality, of whatever 
kind, all controlled meaning, of which common accept- 
ance is justified and upon which common action is 
possible, is reached by processes of knowledge. Genetic 
analysis shows that the credulities of faith, the illusions 



Mediation Theories 163 

of imagination, the artificialities of formal argument, the 
vanities of misplaced hope, the excesses of passion, can 
be detected and cured only by the sober experimental 
methods proper to judgment. Where would society 
and the individual alike be if the dream, the vision, 
the postulate of the "will-to-believe," even the ideal, 
were not controlled in theory and practice by the 
reasonable insight and common proof of thought? We 
do not find here justification for the extreme doctrine 
of the a-logism which charges knowledge with rendering 
only a conceptual distortion of the real, and finds in 
mediation through ideas only a means of banishing the 
actual and concrete. On the contrary, the end of 
mediation is to restore the actual, to bring the imagin- 
ary within the range of concrete control. Without 
the sifting and testing processes of knowledge, it is 
difficult to see what resort there would be against the 
delusions of the insane, the Utopias of the visionary, 
and the nightmares of the dreamer. 

Criticise knowledge, therefore, as we may, as being 
static, rigid, artificial, geometrical, we can not dispense 
with it. It makes an essential report on the nature 
of things. Without it, we might have immediate con- 
tacts with reality, as many have claimed ; but the re- 
ality given in such contacts would be, as we will have 
occasion to see later on, without meaning to instruct 
or ideal to guide us. 

13. It would seem, therefore, that while knowledge 
gives us an aspect of the real, it does not exhaust reality; 
that the entire series of aspects given us as immediate 
values, ideal constructions, and direct and intuitive 
apprehensions, unless considered as in some sense 
secondary and illusional, must have some other justi- 
fication in our theory. 



164 Genetic Interpretation 

14. Of the actuality theories to which these general 
criticisms apply, the narrowest is the Positivism which 
accepts only the control secured by positive experiment, 
excluding the processes of rational and discursive proof, 
so far as they can not be tested by fact. But this is 
to set unnecessary limits to knowledge, since all pro- 
perly conducted argumentation is in its nature ex- 
perimental;^ and the demand that this mark shall 
be explicitly formulated in the method is to deprive 
the scientific man himself of his most affective weapons 
of proof. ^ 

Materialism goes a step further. It is refuted, with- 
out more ado, by the fact that spiritualism rests upon 
the same sort of assumption that it does : the assumption, 
namely, of the reality of one sort of actuality together 
with the denial of the other and correlative sort. 

Spiritualism, in certain of its monistic forms, is little 
better off. For unless considerations of other sorts 
than the grounds of actuality are taken into account, 
it can not disprove the physical or annul it, any more 
than materialism can disprove or annul the spiritual. 
Both represent forms of actual control, which are always 
present together and which divide the territory of fact 
between them. In fact, however, the grounds upon 
which spiritualism is usually defended are broader; 
one attributes to the soul more than simple actuality, 

' Shown in detail in vol. ii. of Thought and Things. Cf. the recent 
article of Rignano in Sciencia, 19 13, N. xxvii-i. 

' It is difficult to define positivism, since it has become a method 
and a temper of mind rather than a theory. The present writer's 
work, Thought and Things, has been described as neo-positivistic (see 
Roberty, Revue Philosophique, Jan., 1914, pp. 21 ff.); and in method and 
certain of its results it is so. But in the results, which deny adequacy 
and finality to knowledge as such, and find reality to be progressively 
realised in aesthetic contemplation, positivism of the nineteenth-century 
type, at any rate, would hardly recognise itself. 



Mediation Theories 165 

finding in it moral and ideal properties. The soul is 
considered as a value, and to be real for that reason. 
This places the theory of spiritualism, in certain of its 
forms, among those of the "idealising" class which 
are now to be considered. 

§j. Ideality Theories: Voluntarism 

15. The reservations now made as to the r61e of 
knowledge in revealing reality are, it is plain, largely 
in the interest of will and feeling. The will postulates 
values desired, ends pursued, ideals cherished; and 
feeling brings us into contact, directly and without 
mediation, with aspects of the world which we can not 
express in the relational terms of knowledge. 

The development of the body of " teleological " 
meaning, constituting worths and ends, reveals motives 
at work correlative to those of knowledge proper. ^ The 
process by which the actual is discovered or confirmed 
is matched by one by which reality is assumed, sup- 
posed, or postulated. The imagination idealises, while 
the judgment actualises. The imagination goes before 
the judgment, schematising, prospecting, experimenting, 
treating its constructions as being real, as-if-real. The 
ideal is the world of the "as-if." 

It is the significance of this as-if-real — of that which 
is assumed, supposed, postulated — that concerns us 
here. Is it no addition to the actually real? — is it 
without significance for the "make-up" of things? Is 
it only a fanciful appendix to the actual, or only an 
imaginative reproduction of it? Does the recognition 
of the worthful side of existence, of the possibilities 

^ Cf. Thought and Things, vol. iii., chap, v flE. 



i66 Genetic Interpretation 

of an Ideal sort resident in the whole, take us no further 
in understanding its intrinsic nature? 

1 6. In reply to these questions, the theorists of a 
second group, the "idealisers," speak with emphasis. 
The interest of idealisation, they say, is as genmne and 
as urgent as that of actualisation. The worth of a 
thing is as real as the fact of it. Indeed, actuality 
itself is but the ideal of one of our interests, that of 
establishing neutral fact or truth. Actuality, like 
other aspects of objects, is fundamentally a value; 
like the others, it is an end or ideal. We reach a neutral 
objective world of fact or truth because we have an 
interest in doing so: an interest in disengaging the 
stable, external, and common from the changing, 
internal, and private in our experience. At the best, 
the whole system of truths is instrumental to the values 
of life, found in morals, religion, art. 

Looked at broadly, therefore, it is the body of inter- 
ests, and the self that exercises these interests, bearing 
in its bosom the system of ends and ideals which fulfil 
them, that impress these minds — the believers in the 
importance of idealisation and of value. The emphasis 
goes over to the inner life, the self, the control within. 
The external fact or truth becomes merely one of a 
series of postulated values ; it is real only as it ministers 
to the development and realisation of the self. The 
truthful is to be read as a partial fulfilment of the whole 
ideal, which alone is the whole real. The ideal — the 
term in which reality finally and fully embodies itself — 
involves value. 

17. Among the views falling in this class, we have 
all the systems of idealism — defined as systems based 
on "ideals" — such as Platonism, certain spiritualisms, 
moralism, various sorts of voluntarism and, on more 



Mediation Theories 167 

modest grounds, pragmatism and instrumentalism. 
To all these theories alike, knowledge is not an end in 
itself; it is merely a means. Truth does not realise or 
summarise reality; it reflects it and makes it available 
in a certain form of value. Actual existence is not 
the final form of reality, but at most a stage in its 
movement, a phase only of its series of appearances. 
Only the supreme value, the ideal good, is absolutely 
real; all other truths and values alike — particular 
facts, goods, beauties — are but shadows of it, approaches 
to it. 

Seeing that it is for the will that all value takes its 
rise, and also that the ideal is that which is set up as 
end to the will, the historical term "voluntarism" may 
well be applied to this general class of theories. As 
actualism, setting out with the type of reality achieved 
or presupposed by knowledge, reaches Intellectualism, 
so idealism as thus defined, setting out with or postulat- 
ing the reality achieved by will, reaches Voluntarism. ^ 

§ 4. Examination of Voluntarism 

18. In proceeding to criticise such theories, we 
should biing out clearly their distinguishing mark. It 
is not value considered merely as fact, as attributed 
worth, value that is known and rendered in judgments 
of appreciation or truth, that they have in mind. For 
such values, considered as part of the actual, are the 
property of knowledge. The good taste of the apple 

' We are concerned with the general theory of idealisation, however, 
under this designation, rather than with the more restricted theories 
of voluntarism strictly conceived. There are certain advocates of ideal 
reality, spiritualists and theists, who would not consent to be called 
voluntarists in the metaphysical sense. 



i68 Genetic Interpretation 

is a value; but it is also a fact. It is realised in sensa- 
tion and generalised in recurrent experience. 

It is, on the contrary, the value that is unrealised, 
assumed, ideal, and all values so far as made ends of 
will, or idealised; the worths which stimulate the will 
and exercise the imagination as schemes of greater 
good, the goods that tempt and the purposes that 
inspire — it is this realm of values which these theories 
would make real. The intellect decrees, "let the true 
be real in its neutral existence, apart from interest and 
will"; but the will replies, "let the good be proved true 
or not, let the ideal be realised or not, still the world is 
one of goods, pictured in imagination, embraced in voli- 
tion, postulated in the ideal. Its significance is for 
the self, and its reahty consists in its power to satisf}^" 
In the function of volition the real is approached; its 
character disclosed. The fundamental human interest 
is not theoretical, but practical; the fundamental real 
is not the true, but the satisfying, the perfect. 

Certain of the more sharp and decisive criticisms of 
this theory may be stated. 

19. (i) Granted, it may be said, that knowledge is 
one interest among many, and that its results represent 
one ideal; still if an ideal is to be taken as the funda- 
mental reahty, why not this one? — the ideal of truth? 
To deny its reality is to open the way to the denial of 
all ideals, for they all rest upon the same basis of postu- 
lation. If the postulate as such is to be taken as the 
embodiment of reality — since it satisfies our will and 
fulfils our interest — then surely the postulate embodied 
in the ideal of truth can not be left out or considered 
secondary to any other. And this for certain reasons. 

(2) The cognitive mode of process seems to have arisen 
genetically to bring coherence, definiteness, and control 



Mediation Theories 169 

among the various postulates of the active and emo- 
tional life. The role of the discursive and experimental 
processes is to confirm and establish what is otherwise 
hypothetical, the matter of assumption and postula- 
tion. The task of knowledge is to turn assumption 
into belief. 

Without knowledge, indeed, desire is undirected, 
will is capricious, action is without confidence, imagina- 
tion is fanciful, morality is hesitating, intercourse is 
ambiguous and unfruitful. With it, on the contrary, 
under its ideal of truth, desires are co-ordinated, will 
passes into rational choice, action becomes confident, 
imagination merges into judgment, and morality 
frankly meets the other person and God. In short, 
all the ideals become intelligible, continuous, and co- 
ordinated goods only by reason of the function of 
knowledge, which not only discovers the ideals, but 
enforces them by finding them true. 

(3) The ideal as such, the good in all its forms, and 
with it the self whose interests it satisfies, develops 
only through the mediation of knowledge. All idealisa- 
tion takes form through the actual. This is the element 
of truth in the saying of the voluntarists to the effect 
that knowledge is instrumental to value, theory to 
practice. While this is true, still the relation may be 
read with equal right in the reverse sense; the sense, 
namely, that values or goods depend upon truths, 
upon knowledges. This is illustrated in the "Socratic 
paradox," "no one can knowingly do wrong"; for it is 
equally true, on the same presuppositions, that no one 
can ignorantly do right. The will must be informed, 
in short, the character shaped, the imagination directed 
by the true, if ideals are to have significance for the 
self that espouses them. Knowledge comes through 



170 Genetic Interpretation 

external control, but self-control comes through 
knowledge. 

(4) The body of stable facts and truths, employed 
as means to the achievement of ends, is necessary, if the 
self is to grow from the stage of instinct and impulsive 
action to that of the reflective postulation of ideal 
goods. Not only are the ideals them.selves reflective 
elaborations of truths ; but the very self, whose interests 
are cited as motive to the postulation of the ideal, is 
the product of the conditions of actuality, physical and 
social, which produce and in turn satisfy its desires. 
This does not in itself reduce the ideal type of reality 
to the actual; but it does show that the actual, in the 
shape of the self, is necessary to the very postulation 
of the ideal. ^ 

20. To sum up these criticisms, we may say, in a 
word, that idealisation, considered as resting upon will 
and issuing in the postulate, can not even prepare its 
own proper object without assuming the validity of 
knowledge. Knowledge is essential; actuality and 
truth give body to the reality postulated in the ideal. 
This is true of any ideal whatever, so far as it incorpor- 
ates genuine worth — the ideal self, the moral good, God. 
The dualism of means and ends remains to the last to 
prevent the acceptance of any form of voluntarism 
which refuses to give to the actual its share in the ter- 
ritory of the real. The means must be actual in order 
that the ends may be truly ideal. 

We must conclude, then, that, while intellectualism 
can not account adequately for reality, voluntarism, 
understood in the sense explained above, is equally 

' In view of this, many voluntarists go over to some form of met- 
empirical will which identifies itself with the self: c/. Urban, Valuation, 
etc., chap. xiv. 



Mediation Theories 171 

unacceptable. They represent principles each imper- 
atively demanding recognition, but each obstinate to 
any final subordination to the other. 

21. The theories based on idealisation take on many 
forms, most of them departures from a pure monism 
of the ideal. Voluntarism in the narrower sense often 
combines, with the postulate of the ideal end, the 
acceptance of a realistic and immediate doctrine of the 
self. Such a self is revealed, it is said, in experiences of 
effort, free choice, and interest. This latter doctrine, 
considered as a form of immediate spiritualism, is 
taken up again later on. It does not properly give 
support to voluntarism, as against intellectualism, 
since intellectual events, considered as experiences, 
are as immediate in consciousness as volitional; and 
since the self of one interest is as directly present as 
the self of another. 

The historical forms of voluntarism, however, from 
Saint Augustine to Maine de Biran, have found, in the 
consciousness of voluntary effort and activity, evidence 
of the reality of the spiritual principle — evidence not 
afforded, that is, by intellectual activity. On our 
interpretation of both functions as motived by interest, 
however, this claim is not well founded. 

22. In recent pragmatic views, an instrumental 
theory of knowledge is combined with an alogistic 
theory of reality. ^ But they do not appeal to the ideals 
of truth and value as giving final form to reality. In 
this sense they are positivistic and relative. 

In moralism and theism the ideal postulates are 
defended. An ideal moral and spiritual life is the end 

^ Cf. Heath Bawden, The Principles of Pragmatism (191 1), in 
which a radical voluntarism extends itself in a " dynamic " theory of 
nature. 



172 Genetic Interpretation 

of all existence. Logically this leads to a form of 
personal pluralism in which reality is taken to be of the 
nature of a community of wills or personalities; or to a 
theism in which the ideal is realised in the person of 
God. 

23. All the objections stated above to a view which 
makes knowledge merely instrumental and truth a 
means rather than an end hold against such a moralism. 
If the self of the moral life is an actual self, reached by 
processes of knowledge, then the cognitive function is 
indispensable; and its ideal, that of truth, must be 
recognised. But this carries with it the reality of the 
external world. If, however, the opposite is the case, 
the self being reached by immediate feeling, then 
reality remains at the stage of assumption, postulation, 
and intuition.^ In any case, to such a view the whole 
problem of the existence of the external world re- 
mains over; as weU as that of the sort of com- 
munity or intercourse possible among the real selves 
postulated as the more or less isolated centres of moral 
interest. 

24. As to the theistic postulate, we have already 
seen its limitations as arbiter of the real. It attempts 
to combine the ideal and the actual in a real person 
infinite in his nature. But so far as ideal, God is 
a postulate, an assumption, beyond the grasp of intel- 
lectual apprehension. So far, on the other hand, as 
God is actual, he is not ideal, but remains a finite 
person, a social fellow, along with other persons. 
He is the great Companion. As such he could claim 
no reality different from that of others, nor from that 
of other things whose existence is also established 

^ One of the views based on immediacy which are to be discussed 
further below. 



Mediation Theories 173 

by the processes of knowledge. The social demand, 
active in the religious life, is for a personal helper, 
a socius, ^ and in God this sort of reality is said to 
be realised. Yet the ideal of personality set up by 
the spiritual and religious postulates is unapproachable 
and eternal, not social in any concrete sense, since not 
proved to be actual. The religious mode of reahsation 
can not of itself escape this antinomy. 

^ I find in an account of the first Gifford lecture of A. J. Balfour {Public 
Opinion, Jan. i6, 1914), the lecturer reported as saying that the God of 
which he would speak was "a spirit communicating with other spirits . . . 
what he should not think it profane to call a social God ... to 
be distinguished from the sort of Absolute to which everything . . . 
was indifferent . . . etc." 



CHAPTER X 

IMMEDIATE THEORIES: (l) THOSE BASED ON THE 
PRIMITIVE AND THE TRANSCENDENT 

§ I. Their basis, Immediacy 

I. In the movement of conscious experience there 
are, as we have seen, certain well-marked periods. 
The earliest period is that in which the distinctions 
have not yet clearly appeared which develop into the 
dualisms of thought. The primitive immediacy of 
feeling is largely sensational, and passes, by means of 
the twofold reference of conscious states, into the 
mode in which the external and internal worlds are 
together mediated. Knowledge gradually frees itself 
and becomes the instrument of the mind. 

A second great period is thus brought in, that of 
mediation through the two contrasted controls. In this 
period the processes of active and voluntary mediation 
are developed. The contents of knowledge become 
means, in the pursuit of ends. Values are set up, ideals 
erected, ends pursued. 

This second period is given over to explicit mediation, 
both cognitive and active. It reaches its extreme de- 
velopment in the logical or reflective mode, in which 
discursive processes become the tool by which remote 
conclusions are brought within the range of reasonable 
thought and judicious practice. 

174 



Immediate Theories, Mysticism, etc. 175 

In the next, the third period, a second immediacy 
appears. The ideals and ends erected in the pursuit 
of mediation take on unconditional form. The prin- 
ciples of reason and the norms of practice, as we have 
shown elsewhere in detail,^ come to stand alone each 
for itself as the outcome of its own process of mediation. 
The categories of thought and the rules of pure reason 
attain a formal universality which dispenses with 
empirical content. They cease to be means or instru- 
ments, and become independent ends and unconditional 
truths. Likewise, the norms of practical reason attain 
formal universality and necessity and present them- 
selves as self-imposed values, no longer requiring 
empirical or prudential means. 

In both cases, the theoretical and the practical, the 
process of mediation abolishes itself by attaining its 
end-state in a new immediacy. In one case, it is an 
immediacy of rational, in the other of practical, intu- 
ition. 

2. At this stage the immediacy reached is secured 
as the outcome of the logical and practical processes 
of mediation operative in the earlier stage ; it represents 
these processes at their completion and fulfilment. 
But it remains in its character twofold. The pure 
reason and the practical reason — or the two states of 
mind designated respectively by these terms — are not 
the same. The spheres of life to which their respective 
categories apply are different. Both in origin and in 
application, one is intellectual, rational, the law of 
thought; the other, both in origin and in application, 
is practical, moral, the rule of practice. This has been 
the result of our investigation of the origin of the pure 
and practical reason. 

* Thought and Things, vol. iii., "Interest and Art," chap. viii. 



176 Genetic Interpretation 

There are thus two periods of immediacy, the one 
primitive and a-logical, the other transcendent and 
hyper-logical. With the one, conscious process begins 
its career; with the other, it ends it. And between the 
two lies the vast tract of mediate function, which 
ministers to the life of neutral knowledge and strenuous 
practice. 

3. In our detailed study, however, and especially 
in one of our more special expositions, ^ we have found, 
besides the two sorts of immediacy just described, a 
third, that of a mode of function in which conscious- 
ness, in the very midst of its dualisms and mediations, 
seems to wish to forget or to banish the distinctions and 
oppositions in its content, and to bring its forces into 
equilibrium in a mode of direct apprehension — to throw 
away its lenses and look directly into the face of reality. 
This is characteristic of the semblant, and more espe- 
cially of the aesthetic, imagination.^ 

In this it is possible to find a synthetic or reconciling 
immediacy which presents certain contrasts with the 
other two. It does not belong, as they both do, to 
one place or stage only of mental development; but 
extends throughout the whole movement. It is a 
mode of realising, as opposed both to cognising and 
to idealising. 

4. It is plain that each of these three immediacies 
may serve in turn as basis of interpretation. All such 
interpretations would, with equal right, be termed 
"immediacy" theories. We find that each of the three 
has served in this role, in the history of philosophy. 
There are theories based on primitive immediacy, on 
transcendent immediacy, and on immediacy of syn- 

' Thought and Things, vol. iii., chap, xiv., §§ 5, 6. 
' See ibid., vol. iii., chap. x. 



Immediate Theories, Mysticism, etc. 177 

thesis or reconciliation. The first two may be described 
one as primitive "affectivism" the other as "transcen- 
dentaHsm"; and there are many varieties under each. 
Under the first, we find Mysticism, Sensationalism, 
Immediate Realism; and under the second, Intuition- 
ism, Absolute Rationalism, Higher Mysticism. 

The third type is not so clearly defined in the history 
of thought, and has no recognised name.^ The name 
varies naturally with the mode of function to which 
the synthetic or reconciling role is assigned. To us, 
as will appear in detail below, it is the aesthetic func- 
tion — hence the term Pancalism, already suggested for 
the special form of the theory stated below. " 

§ 2. Theories based on Primitive Immediacy 

5. The assumption that in a certain direct aware- 
ness consciousness has its closest contact with reality, 
has always been attractive, both to those who are not 
speculatively disposed and to those who have exhausted 
the resources of speculation. The primitive data of 
consciousness are, of course, in some sense the founda- 
tion of all further data, and the return to immediate 
certainty is a source of consolation after speculative 
misadventure. 

Reserving for the present the theories that resort to 
a higher or hyper-logical immediacy, of the nature of 

I If one should seek for a term in "ism" analogous to those in use in 
other cases, no doubt " contemplationism " would do, for the word "con- 
templation" is already widely in use for the act of realising a content 
directly, an act having both cognitive and active factors. In view of 
the close resemblance, however, of all the sorts of immediacy among 
themselves, considered as states of feeling, I shall employ the phrase 
"constructive affectivism." 

= See the preliminary sketch given in Thought and Things, vol. iii., 
chap. XV. 



178 Genetic Interpretation 

intuition, let us enquire how the awareness of primitive 
or undeveloped experience may be turned to the 
advantage of theory. 

6. (i) Primitive Mysticism. In simple and naive 
mysticism, the appeal is made to an "inner light," a 
source of direct illumination. It is accompanied by states 
of ecstasy, induced by withdrawal from the world, giving 
freedom from thought and care. In certain psycho- 
sophic systems, a detailed or long-continued technique 
is resorted to, to deaden the functions of thought and 
dampen the stirrings of will. Thus made vacant, the 
soul may be filled with an inpouring of reality. Ori- 
ental mysticism is of this type ; it forswears speculation, 
and counsels isolation and personal absorption. The 
divine is reached by a contemplation which is the more 
profitable as it is the more vacant of intelligent interest 
and free from the fretting of desire. 

Its justification as a point of view has remained, like 
itself, unspeculative. It is a spontaneous way of 
treating life and the world, a first interpretation, 
externally allied with the social and religious interests 
which take root in it. The fervour of primitive religious 
ceremonial and the effervescence of social excitement 
terminate in such states of mind. They thus take on 
worth as being symbolic of the values of communal life 
and of the mysterious things of the occult world. Per- 
sonal thought, intelligent will, ritual observance, 
morality itself, are all swept away in the onset of the 
mystic efflatus. The result is a purging of the mind, 
a physical fatigue, a consecration of spirit, a sense of 
confirmed faith and new inspiration. The real is 
realised in the mystic trance. The prosaic world is a 
mere dream, its affairs a hindrance, its interests a 
distraction ; the real lies beyond it all. 



Immediate Theories, Mysticism, etc 179 

7. The reason that this point of view has remained 
without theoretical justification is probably twofold: 
it both has none and needs none. It needs none be- 
cause, to those who accept it as final, its evidence is 
just in itself; it is by nature apart from demonstrative 
processes of proof. It has no proof, in the strict sense, 
because its data are primitive; there is nothing more 
fundamental or simple to which they can be referred. 
It is, in short, just the merit of the primitive that it 
is realised only when discursive and voluntary interests 
are in abeyance or are undeveloped. To get back to 
the primitive is to strip one's mind of the mass of logical 
and sentimental over-growth. 

8. It is for this reason, however, that the mystic 
point of view, while so recurrent, has remained so un- 
productive. The return to immediate life, to the 
intimate flow of things, as is enjoined by James — to 
cite the latest view in which the primitive has had its 
claims upheld — affords rather an effective protest 
against intellectualism than a position having log- 
ical ground. To come close to unordered sensations, 
to realise a "blooming confusion," to feel the elan of 
pure duration, is not to apprehend a very extensive 
reality, whatever we may say of its spicy quality. And 
the very qualitative distinctions themselves upon which 
knowledge proceeds and practice depends, taken in 
their primitive simplicit}^, are mere contacts with this 
or that, without further meaning. If this were all, 
human commerce with reality would be about the same 
as that reached by low organisms, except perhaps for 
the addition of certain new qualities; and however 
pimgent and moving the new contacts might be — the 
moral, the assthetic, the religious — it would still seem 
that the intellectual and practical machinery of the 



i8o Genetic Interpretation 

mind must have arisen to fulfil some useful function. 
It is here in fact that the proper theory of the 
immediate has to begin its construction, either by 
reading something into the primitive or by extracting 
something from it. In either case, it is not its primi- 
tiveness and simplicity that makes it available for 
theory, but the contrary. 

9. As soon as mystic theory began to take on posi- 
tive character — as it did in Plato, Boehme, and Plotinus 
— we come upon one of two alternatives. Either it 
goes over from a primitive immediacy to one that is 
very developed, transcendent in its type; or it finds in 
the immediate certain complications or implications 
which destroy its simplicity. It is especially easy, 
from our knowledge of what develops later on in grow- 
ing experience, to reconstitute immediacy as a mosaic 
of hidden motives and potencies. 

10. (2) Subjectivism and Idealism. The first ad- 
vance in this direction was that which isolated the sub- 
jective point of view as such. This became the safe 
possession of the Greek thinkers in and after the Socra- 
tic period. Becoming more and more clear in Plotinus 
and St. Augustine, it became in Descartes the presup- 
position of reflective thought. Modern philosophy 
has never seriously disputed the principle that reahty 
makes the revelation of itself in conscious states — sen- 
sations, perceptions, ideas — and materialism itself 
justifies its negation of mind by citing what we know of 
matter. We know matter in motion and we infer that 
its properties are such that our minds and our know- 
ledge are secondary and derived products. Even should 
we admit such a contention, the fact would remain that 
such a thing as knowledge is present in the real, and 
that it is only by appeahng to knowledge that the 



Immediate Theories, Mysticism, etc. i8i 

unreality of mind can be proved. The presupposition 
of conscious process remains intact in any case. 

On this presupposition repose, in fact, the systems of 
philosophy classed together as idealisms.^ Subjective 
idealism is the extreme form of the theory which de- 
velops the subjective postulate. Reality is construed 
in terms of a monistic subjective principle. 

II. The difficulty arising from the emphasis placed 
upon the presupposition of consciousness, taken in 
the subjective sense, is plain. While assuming the 
inner life, one may fail to recognise equally all the pro- 
cesses in which that life takes on definite form. These 
processes proceed in reference to two opposed controls, 
inner and outer, the self and the external world. The 
trans-subjective reference is universal and compelling, 
all through mental development. ^ The foreign control 
exercised upon perception by the external, is as real 
and definite as the inner control exercised through 
the active life by the self. To assume consciousness, 
therefore, as it is, in its actual development, is to accept 
its assertion of a reality external to it.^ 

This point is reinforced by the consideration that in 

'Understood in the sense of "idea-isms" — systems which recognise 
the mediating r61e of subjective states or ideas; not in the sense of 
"ideal-isms" — systems which turn upon the recognition of ideals. 
This ambiguity already pointed out in the use of the term idealism in 
English leads to much confusion. 

* The use of the term "inner sense," for the organ of apprehension 
of the world within, gives us verbal evidence of this; the very term 
suggests the correlation with the "outer senses." 

3 Cj. the article "Mind and Body," in the Psychological Review, May, 
1903 . As usually put, this criticism drives the subjectivist to "solipsism" 
• — the acceptance of merely the one private mental life. 

But even that refuge is properly to be denied to him, I think ; for the 
private person, the one mental life assumed by solipsism, could not ma- 
ture without involving itself in a mass of inter-subjective and trans- 
subjective relationships. 



1 82 Genetic Interpretation 

the external world, so recognised, other minds find 
themselves; they are also foreign to the single person's 
psychical life. And, further, they are apprehended in 
experiences in which personal selves and impersonal 
things are inextricably interwoven inter se. To deny 
the trans-subjective reference, while retaining the 
subjective point of view, therefore, is to cut off the 
inter-subjective — to deny knowledge of other persons 
or communication with them. Experience remains 
immediate, it is true, but it becomes also unsharable. 
It may be primitive, but it is nothing else. It is as 
unavailable in theory as it would be insignificant in 
fact. It would be typified by the flash of conscious- 
ness that passes — if it does — over the surface of the 
jelly-fish. 

12. Of course the idealists do not stop with the 
jelly-fish; they find implications which introduce im- 
plicitly or potentially a developed mental life. But 
this procedure, if it follow the leading of nature, issues, 
not in monistic idealism, but in dualistic realism. For 
the very form which the hidden implications take on, 
so far as they are really present, is that of mediation of 
one type or the other, intellectual or practical. Seek- 
ing to remain monistic, we find ourselves on the 
ground of one of the theories criticised above, the 
theories of actualisation and idealisation ; the idealist, 
in the sense of subjectivist, becomes logically either 
intellectualist or voluntarist. ^ In either case, as we 
have seen, he is bound to recognise, along with the 
postulate of subjectivity, some sort of trans-subjective 
existence. 

In view of this, most systems of spiritual monism 

' The third alternative, the resort to immediacy of the higher intuitive 
or synthetic type, is considered further below. 



Immediate Theories, Mysticism, etc. 183 

fail to effect a satisfying synthesis. They take advan- 
tage of the immediacy of the subjective to refute materi- 
alism and naturalism, and then go on to read into the 
subjective a positive content in the interest of a mental 
principle or soul. The difficulty with this is that the 
properties claimed for immediacy do not warrant such 
a procedure. The self, the mental considered as 
positive content, is an organisation effected under a 
control strictly correlative with that of the external. 
To get the mental and the social, one must get the 
trans-subjective also, the physical. 

The most interesting way yet suggested of meeting 
this difficulty is that of construing the external world 
entirely in terms of the social. This would give what 
we might call a "communal idealism."' If made out, 
however, it would be a "mediate" theory, not one of 
immediacy; and it would still have the difficulty of 
reconciling the modes of actuality and ideality, as 
already pointed out of other such theories. Is the 
social order, of which reality would consist, to be looked 
upon as an actual or as an ideal order? The demand 
for such a synthesis of actual and ideal, in the sphere 
of the social, the ethical and religious postulates seem 
partially to meet, but not adequately.^ 

^ Such a resort was intimated by Lotze, and has been explicitly 
suggested by Ormond (A. T. Ormond, The Foundations of Knowledge, 
chap, vii., especially pp. 202 ff.). In principle the conception goes back 
to Leibnitz's theory of monads whose essence consists in presentation. 

* The attempts, notably that of Lotze, to sublimate the physical in 
the social, rest in fact on the ground of the inconceivability of mechani- 
cal interaction in nature. But the substitution of social for mechanical 
interaction is analogical and without real proof. The only way to 
secure such a position would be to discover a mode of apprehension in 
which reality, while "extra-psychic" (foreign to the individual) is not 
"trans-subjective" (foreign to society). We will see later on that in 
aesthetic contemplation this condition is fulfilled. The work of art. 



1 84 Genetic Interpretation 

§ J. Theories based on the Immediacy of Completion or 
Transcendence 

13. Obviously the immediatist is thus led to pass 
from the primitive or original to the transcendent or 
completed, in his interpretation of immediacy. He 
goes over to the hyper-logical or intuitive, in which the 
processes of mediation themselves issue. Passing over 
the movements of knowledge and will, and fixing his 
gaze on the ideals, the consummations, the end-states of 
mind, he realises reality by innate ideas, higher instinct, 
pure reason, intuition, the a priori; or finds it in a 
mystical divine presence apprehended by the eye of 
faith. 

Here we have a group of theories for which the imme- 
diate data of consciousness are not the "low things," 
the simple and primitive contacts, here and there, with 
the flowing stream; but the "high things," the univer- 
sals of thought, the absolutes of value, which are 
implicated in experience and make it possible. ^ 

Three types of view may be distinguished under this 
heading: Intuitionism, Transcendentalism, and Higher 
Mysticism. 

14. (i) Intuitionism. The intuitionist prefers the 
higher immediacy of fulfilment or completion to the 
lower immediacy of primitiveness. He correctly says 

having a synnomic meaning, is charged with a communal self, while 
still remaining for the individual part of external nature. The life 
attributed to it, in the observer's contemplation, is not one belonging 
to an individual self, but one through which each individual spectator 
partakes of a larger life. See below, chap, xiv., § 6. 

' This has been also the line of actual historical progress. After the 
immediate subjectivism of Descartes and Malebranche, came the 
refined spiritualism of Leibnitz and the transcendentalism of Kant; 
and after the immediate sensationalism of Hume and Berkeley, came 
the intuitionism of Reid. 



Immediate Theories, Mysticism, etc. 185 

that reality, if it is to be of any significance, must be 
complex and full, not simple and empty. Why realise 
a something that amoimts to nothing? On the con- 
trary, he goes on to say, when we "reaUse," although we 
do come in contact with something, this something is 
found fit to be known, or imagined, or feared, or wor- 
shipped; it is a "some- what," having a wealth of conno- 
tations, not merely a "some- that," with no connotations 
at all. So the question arises as to how an immediacy 
of fulfilment, consummation, or completion, can retain 
a content which, if present at all, must be due to pre- 
ceding processes of mediation, and which can continue 
to mean what it does only because these processes 
remain, in some obscure way, in operation. 

15. The intuitionist, however, does not accept this 
last statement. Intuition for him is the immediate 
apprehension of what is of the highest and richest 
import: the self, the external world, cause, freedom, 
duty, God. Such high truths come directly from real- 
ity into the soul by the avenue of intuition. 

As soon, however, as the intuitionist is pressed to 
point out some item of knowledge surely given by 
intuition — that is, given independently of prolonged 
learning and experience — he finds himself embarrassed. 
Descartes' "innate ideas" are criticised by Locke; the 
rationalist's native categories of cause and space are 
refuted by Berkeley and Hume. The familiar issue of 
the controversy is that intuitionism — except when it 
defines itself in terms of the primitive, as explained 
above — ^finds itself driven into some form of formalism, 
in which the content of knowledge, the concrete truth 
which gives value to the intuition, is handed over to 
experience. What remains of the intuition is a merely 
formal or logical principle by which the content is 



1 86 Genetic Interpretation 

organised. Intuition supplies the form, experience the 
matter. 

The criticism to which the intuition theory, con- 
sidered as an interpretation of reality, is then exposed, 
is evident. It so divorces intuition from experience 
that its entire concrete filling or content is lost. Logical 
principles become tautologies, ethical maxims become 
formal rules, space and time become vast emptinesses. 
We have a system of notions which are practically 
superfluous and worthless. A progressive experience 
is after all necessary, proceeding by the organisation of 
knowledge and interest under actual genetic motives. 
It is only in the outcome of actual experience and 
through a reflective interpretation of it, that we be- 
come aware of the logical categories and practical 
imperatives by which we conduct our lives. The 
separation of form and matter is simply an artifice; 
such and such form is form only as there is such and 
such content which is so formed. 

i6. It now becomes clear that if any raison d'etre 
is to be assigned to the supposed intuitions, thus left 
suspended in mid-air, so to speak, it must be by the 
assumption of some reality existing outside of experience 
altogether.^ Accordingly, two further alternatives 
logically arise, those of dogmatic spiritualism and trans- 
cendental absolutism. One of these is historically 
the alternative of the Scottish realists, the other that 
of the Kantian and post- Kantian German transcend- 
entalists. These positions are both transcendental 

' The new intuitionism, represented by Bergson, does not seem to 
escape this assumption. The time and free will which are considered 
immediate data of consciousness find their supplement in a creative 
evolution in which the principle of life takes somewhat the place of the 
spiritual principle of other theories. 



Immediate Theories, Mysticism, etc. 187 

in a broad sense; since for both reality is something 
beyond experience, although given in an immediacy 
of the type of fulfilment or completion. Technically, 
the term transcendental is generally applied, however, 
only to the German absolutism. 

17. (2) Dogmatic Spiritualism. The hypothesis of 
spirit or soul is a simple and direct resort. Intuition 
becomes the organ of apprehension of the soul or spirit- 
ual principle. The soul reacts intuitively to reality, 
realising directly both itself and the world. 

This, however, amounts to an interpretation of 
intuition. It gives it a basis, by means of an assump- 
tion, instead of merely accepting what intuition can 
immediately give. The soul or spiritual principle thus 
supposed is itself a concept or notion, drawn from 
extended experiences of knowledge and action, of inter- 
est and effort.^ We know the characters of the self, 
as we know those of the world, through tentative and 
experimental processes, social in character; through 
recurrences, conversions, failures, successes, inferences, 
all shot through with threads of social intercourse. 
To cite such a notion in support of intuition is to deny 
the efficiency or the sufficiency of the latter; for it 
amounts to substituting for it the outcome of the 
mediate and discursive processes which intuition is 
supposed to supplant. Once granted the notion of a 
substantial soul, the presence of intuitive categories or 
rules may be taken to confirm it; but the reverse pro- 
cedure is not valid: the intuitions can not be made the 
basis of knowledge of the spiritual principle, since they 

' To this it may be replied that the soul is itself an intuition. But 
even so we may still ask how that would help us to know what the soul 
is really like, what its actual characters and powers are. These ques- 
tions can be answered from personal and social experience alone. 



1 88 Genetic Interpretation 

are void of concrete content. Apart from experience, 
they are formal and empty. 

1 8. Moreover once begun such a procedure has 
neither control nor limit. All sorts of dogmatisms 
follow. Whatever logical classes, rational identities, 
practical casuistries, psychological faculties, seem con- 
venient in the progress of apologetic discussion, the 
soul is big enough to contain them all; they, like it, 
become intuitive, beyond the reach of proof, as they 
are also beyond the range of doubt. The development 
of the Wolffian dogmatism before Kant, and that of 
the faculty psychology in Scotland, show the extrav- 
agances to which such a theory lends itself. 

19. (3) Kantian Criticism. The other form taken 
by this sort of immediatism is more profound. It 
consists in a critical examination of experience with a 
view to discovering exactly to what extent there are in 
it elements of apprehension which are synthetic, not 
merely analytic, and not due to experience. Do we 
have realisations over and above the discoveries we 
make in the exercise of our perceptive and discursive 
faculties? 

Besides answering this question in the affirmative, 
Kant instituted a comparison of the great modes of 
mental function in respect to their relation to reality, 
stating the problem of the comparative morphology, 
as we have called it, of the formal elements — the a 
priori realisations — of intellect, will, and feeling. Which 
of these gives the most valid, the "realist," real? — 
and how do their different realisations go together? 
Do they harmonise or conflict with one another, sup- 
plement or interfere with one another?^ 

' This is the problem we are here taking up, except that for Kant it 
was the comparison of a priori forms (transcendent and logical), while 



Immediate Theories, Mysticism, etc. 189 

In the outcome, Kant finds a priori forms, immediate 
and intuitive realisations, in each of the three great 
modes of function. But when he comes to consider 
their respective validity and estimate their content, 
he does not stop with dogmatism, nor with mere in- 
tuitionism. On the contrary, he establishes the point 
that rational form is empty, but for the content which 
comes from experience. The categories of the reason 
are valueless, apart from their phenomenal use. The 
appeal to a substantive soul or spiritual principle in 
support of these forms is not valid, since this principle 
is real only for thought; it is "noumenal" in its 
character. To apply the categories to the thing-in- 
itself would be to bring this latter into the sphere of 
phenomenal existence and simply duplicate the experi- 
ence we have. Rational intuition, therefore, is not an 
independent organ of the apprehension of reality in 
itself. The categories of thought and the ideas of the 
reason are merely regulative principles of our appre- 
hension. 

The real world and the real self, reached in our ex- 
perience, are phenomenal; but for Kant they are the 
only sort of reality that our processes of knowledge 
are capable of attaining. 

20. The practical reason, operative in the sphere 
of will, contains also its a priori form, the imperative 
of duty. And in it Kant finds ths justification of the 
ideas of reason — God, freedom, immortality — that is 
wanting to the pure reason itself. Here, in the ideal 

our problem is the comparison of all the modes of reality that con- 
sciousness accepts or assumes, of whatever kind (empirical and 
actual). The method also diflfers. Kant's method is that of criticising 
a finished outcome: asking how it is possible; while ours is that of 
describing and interpreting a genetic movement. 



190 Genetic Interpretation 

of the good, the ideas of the reason become constitutive. 
The good is an absolute teleological ideal expressive of 
the nature of the moral agent. From this follows the 
reality of the soul as a free and immortal personality. 

While the pure reason, therefore, can not reach a 
reality that is more than phenomenal, the practical 
reason does so, in the postulate of the absolute good. 
There is thus an opposition between the two, or rather 
a contrast ; since as organ of the apprehension of reality, 
the preference attaches to will. This leaves the rational 
nature of reality undetermined, the cognitive processes 
spending themselves without reaching their goal. Is 
there, then, it may be asked, any further justification 
of knowledge as such, and any evidence of essential 
unity as between the theoretical and practical sides of 
the reason? 

21. This is the important question of the morpho- 
logy of reality as indicated above. Whether or not 
rational intuition reaches an absolute, whether or not 
the practical reason makes good its postulate in any 
final sense, this problem remains over: that of the 
synthesis of knowledge and will. Do we have to re- 
cognise these modes of mental function as being separate 
and in opposition to each other, or do they unite in 
reaching some synthetic and complete rendering of 
reality? Kant's resort to the noumenal, as opposed 
to the phenomenal, only sharpens the distinction 
between theoretical and practical intuition by justi- 
fying the trans-subjective postulate of the one, while 
denying the trans-subjective presupposition of the 
other. The result so far is a form of voluntarism 
based on moral intuition. 

The further thought of Kant^ carries him over to a 

' Contained in his Critique of Judgment. 



Immediate Theories, Mysticism, etc. 191 

form of absolutism in which the aesthetic judgment 
plays an important part. This is of importance in the 
development of theories of the synthetic and reconciling 
type, as well as in that of absolute idealism. Its con- 
sideration in the former aspect is deferred to its proper 
place below. ^ 

22. By way of criticism, we may say that Kant 
himself demonstrates the futiHty of the distinction 
between the phenomenal and the noumenal. The 
attempt to give transcendental value to the intuitions 
meets with distinct failure. To get a reality having 
any intelligible content, resort must be had after all 
to experience, to the phenomenal, and to the acceptance 
of its trans-subjective reference. How to hold together, 
then, the modes of reality discovered by mediating 
experiential processes and those implied in intuitive 
immediacy — this remains the question. 

Philosophy in Germany after Kant showed a series 
of efforts properly described as romantic and epic ; ef- 
forts to construct the absolute on the basis of noumenal 
reality; efforts which vibrate between the claims of 
thought and those of will, between intellectualism and 
voluntarism. ^ 

§ 4. Results 

23. The outcome of our examination of theories 
based upon the intuitive type of immediacy is on the 
whole as follows : 

The doctrine of intuition, developing into dogmatic 
and absolutist theories, does not justify our looking to 

' See chap, xi., § 4. 

2 Aspects of this absolute idealism are presented in other connections 
below: the treatment of the absolute as super-personal (Bradley), the 
resort to the eesthetic (Schelling), etc. 



192 Genetic Interpretation 

immediacy of this type for an exclusive or final revela- 
tion of reality. For this sort of immediacy is empty, 
apart from the filling it receives from concrete experi- 
ence of the mediate type — that is, from experience of 
actual knowledge and will — much as the first imme- 
diacy, that of the primitive, is blind except for the 
same resort. One lacks content, the other form. 

This is in itself, moreover, a demonstration of our 
position that of these two immediacies, the one, found 
at the beginning of the genetic progression of mind, 
looks forward toward the mediating processes in which 
it is to receive its enlightenment; while the other, 
coming latest in the movement of genesis, looks 
backward to the same processes for its content or em- 
bodiment. The one effects contacts which are un- 
intelligible; the other lacks contacts which are more 
than formal. The one gives material which is shapeless ; 
the other issues in a hollow shell without material. 

The lack in each case is evident. We can not dis- 
pense either with the concrete intellectual discoveries 
or with the direct practical guidance which the exercise 
of our mediating faculties of knowledge and will alone 
affords. 



CHAPTER XI 

IMMEDIATE THEORIES: (ll) THOSE BASED ON THE 
IMMEDIACY OF SYNTHESIS 

§ J. The Immediacy oj Synthesis 

I. A third type of immediacy appears when pro- 
cesses themselves relatively distinct, and mediate 
in their type, fall together in a whole of synthesis 
and apparent reconciliation. The unity of self-con- 
sciousness, for example, seems to be in a sense a syn- 
thesis of many processes present together; the unity of 
volition, the synthesis of the motives or active elements 
which lead up to conscious decision; apperception in 
general, a synthesis on the side of content which gives 
a value of immediacy. In each of these cases, the 
synthetic result, in which the elements lose their 
separate character or function, is a new state of mind, 
something sui generis. Its r61e in the apprehension of 
reality is disclosed in the character of its object. As a 
state of mind, it must be considered as for itself not 
composite, though issuing from the partial motives or 
factors which have entered into it.^ We should not 
read into it meanings which belong genetically either 

^ It is one of the canons of genetic logic that each succeeding psychical 
mode is to be understood only by its own inherent and actual characters: 
the canon of "progression" (with the fallacy of "composition"). See 
Thought and Things, vol. i., chap, i., sect. 23. 

13 193 



194 Genetic Interpretation 

before or after it in the development of consciousness; 
but we must take its meaning only for what it is. 

Among the theories of reality based on immediacy, 
an important group make appeal to synthetic states 
such as these, to illustrate the immediacy intended. 
Besides the theories of primitive and transcendent 
immediacy, already spoken of, we find a further group 
based upon the immediacy of synthesis or reconciliation. 

§ 2. Use of the Synthesis of Personality 

2. Higher Mysticism. The groping for the real, 
characteristic of early or primitive mysticism, was 
directed toward objects of mystery, fear, awe, and led 
to states of absorption, ecstasy, trance, social frenzy, 
and actual mania. Although vaguely animistic in its 
earliest forms, it was not directed inward upon the 
self, but outward upon the world or upon a mystic 
presence, embodied in the portent, the magical rite, 
or some other symbol. It was only after the rise of the 
distinctions in which the subjective was in some degree 
isolated, as being an inner world, that such mysticism 
could attempt to justify itself by reflection. This 
became possible in Greek thought after the subject- 
ivism of the Socratics had prepared the way for the 
doctrine of conscious personality. In this doctrine, 
the mystic tradition took on another and more rational 
phase. It was different from primitive awe and ecstasy, 
and also from mystic absorption and exhaustion in the 
transcendent, in that it undertook to justify itself by 
a more or less conscious use of the notion of personality. 

3. This appears in the Alexandrian mystics, Philo 
and Plotinus. Forsaking causal and logical explana- 
tions, they depicted the creation as a progression of the 



Immediate Theories — Synthetic 195 

world from God, in emanations or concentric circles; it 
was simply a happening, arising in the personality of 
God and issuing in other personalities. In Plotinus, 
this becomes an explicit declaration of the presence 
of the One to the soul, in the state of ecstasy by 
which the individual returns to God. The world 
processes are happenings within the all-embracing 
One, whose first movement is to give birth to personal 
beings. ^ 

Both in the outcome — the abrogation of the dualism 
between the self and the world — and in the method 
of apprehension — direct contemplation of simple hap- 
penings, taking the place of logical or causal interpre- 
tations — it is to be understood as a mysticism based 
upon the synthesis of personality. ^ 

4. The resort to personality was renewed in the 
mysticism of Boehme at the beginning of the seven- 
teenth century. To him, as to Plotinus, personality 
was the all-embracing category, reconciling the opposi- 
tions of thought and will. But while to Plotinus, the 
speculative thinker, the absolute was the One, a pre- 
supposition of the diversity of personal units and 
motives; to Boehme, the pious Christian given to 
meditation, it was a real or ontological first-stage in 

^ In the postulate of mind as pure entity or the One, preceding the 
movement from which personaHty issues, Plotinus goes over to a sort 
of transcendence. But this seems merely to have supplied a logical 
background to his spiritualistic mysticism. 

' "By an act of contemplation or direct intuition, the human soul 
vindicates its oneness with the divine. The will goes out in ecstasy, 
the heart in love; the will subsides in self-suppression, the heart in a 
trance-like calm. The divine presence, not revealed to thought or 
attained by effort, is taken up in feeling by a movement of personal 
absorption. Here we see the legitimate development of Platonic love, 
freed from its rational presuppositions." — ^The author's History of 
Psychology, vol. i., London ed., p. 75. 



196 Genetic Interpretation 

the development of the divine nature. God is self- 
generated through successive oppositions and recon- 
ciliations in his own nature. The mental faculties, 
knowledge, will, and love, arise in the course of this 
evolution of positive personality. There is a constant 
movement of adjustment — assertion, limitation, recon- 
ciliation — in the bosom of personality; and in this 
the motives of partial process are absorbed and 
unified. 

This idea lent itself directly to the romantic inter- 
pretations of later German philosophy, in which the 
reconciliation of contraries plays so large a part; par- 
ticularly to that found in the absolutism of Fichte and 
Hegel. But as soon as it was taken out of the atmo- 
sphere of mysticism and theological faith, it became 
transformed into one or other of the two alternatives 
of the theories of mediation, intellectualism or volun- 
tarism. Advocates of pure thought, on the one hand, 
declared, "in the beginning was the word"; while ad- 
vocates of pure will, on the other hand, retorted, "in 
the beginning was the act." And so systems of abso- 
lutism, based upon alternative interpretations of thought 
and will, repeated themselves. 

5. In this development, history itself puts in evi- 
dence the criticism to which theories based upon the 
synthesis of personality are exposed. The postulate 
of immediate consciousnes of personality may be utilised 
in mystic contemplation and theological faith; but as 
soon as a justification of this is attempted, such person- 
ality either falls apart into the fragments of mental 
analysis or becomes transcendent in an absolute and 
formal principle, whether thought or will. It is one 
thing to say that in our sense of personality we are 
immediately aware of a synthetic unity in which the 



Immediate Theories — Synthetic 197 

various powers of the mind in some manner inhere; 
this is but to recognise the fact which mysticism reahses. 
But it is another thing to say that the personality 
which thus apprehends reaHty is itself the synthetic 
form of the reality that it apprehends. The dualism 
of "self and other" asserts itself; and in overcoming 
this dualism, the Fichtean and Hegelian absolute per- 
forms its most startling feats. It "posits," "acknow- 
ledges," "asserts" — all substitutes for the old mystic 
term "creates" — the "other," which must in some 
manner arise out of the absolute unity and identity of 
the One, 

In fact, these logical interpretations do not avail 
more than the simple faith of Jacob Boehme. It is 
perhaps in the mystic moment itself that the objective 
self does reach real immediacy; but ordinarily this 
self is a complex of sensational and social elements in 
which the processes of mediation are more or less evi- 
dent. To resort to this sort of a self is to return to 
dogmatic spiritualism, with all its difficulties, and 
abandon the high road of the immediate. As has been 
remarked already, Boehme himself indicated this 
alternative in finding opposition and distinction inher- 
ent in the self-generating nature of God. . 

The difficulty of finding any real and concrete 
difference between mind and body, on the basis of 
a self-identical absolute principle, was the motive to 
Spinoza's doctrine of "substance and attributes." 
In the attributes, we recognise the duality of con- 
crete existences; in substance, the identity of the ab- 
solute. The attributes are defined as "thought" 
and "extension"; the substance is expressly declared 
to be undefinable. Nevertheless it is called God; 
and in this we see the motives of religious mysti- 



198 Genetic Interpretation 

cism reasserting themselves. In spite of the pro- 
fession of a "geometrical" method, in Spinoza the 
antinomy between ideality and actuality, the infinite 
and the particular, seeks an emotional solution. 

6. The Super-personal. In religious thought, as 
we have seen, the idea of personality is carried over to 
the absolute which takes the name of God. He is the 
Super-personal, realised by faith but not adequately 
apprehended by reason. 

In contemporary philosophical discussion, such a 
super-personal absolute has been approached in an 
interesting way by those who seek to preserve the 
point of view of subjective personality, while laying 
stress on the immediacy of feeling or "sentience," 
together with the realising of which feeling is capable. 
The super-personal is made a sort of limiting case, as if 
reached by means of a series of approximations in the 
expansion of the self. The various mental powers are 
conceived as carried on to infinity. This is to suppose 
a larger all-but-infinite personality, or an "absolute" 
whose personality is ambiguous, present in each in- 
dividual "finite centre."^ 

There is, however, no further justification for con- 
sidering the self as synthetic principle of reality, beyond 
the identification of the organisation of the mental life, 
with its show of i" unity in variety" and "identity in 
difference, " with that of the world in general. But, as 
we have seen, it is in this organisation — and when we 
remain true to it — that our interpretation finds itself 
embarrassed by the sharpest dualisms and oppositions: 
those of mind and body, fact and ideal, truth and value. ^ 

* Cf. Appendix C. on the position of F. H. Bradley. 

* What our personaUty suggests itself as being is not a whole of all 
the elements of reality, but part of a larger whole, physical and social. 



Immediate Theories — Synthetic 199 

The projection of the entire picture of the mental life 
upon the larger cosmic canvas does not seem to rid 
it of its inherent disharmonies. 

While such formulas as unity in variety, identity 
in difference, and organic relation of whole and parts, 
do present reassuring figures drawn from the more 
formal aspects of the life of the self, they do not really 
give us light on the material nature of the world. ^ At 
any rate we may say — recognising the profundity of 
these attempts to interpret the conflicting motives of 
the real ^ — that while these aspects of conscious organi- 
sation do go some way to illustrate the nature of reality, 
other modes of self-conscious unity may be pointed 
out which take us further still. Instead of simply 
assuming by analogy that the nature of reality, in its 
completed organisation, repeats or expresses the unity 
of organised experience, we may find evidence of this 
identity, where Kant thought it possible to find it, within 
mental function itself. Is there not, we may ask, some 
mode of experience in which the self realises its true 
nature by an identification of itself with its own 
organised content? To this question, we are able in 
what follows to give an affirmative answer. 

7. But the mere expansion of personality accom- 
plishes nothing. As the factors involved are one by one 
pressed on to infinity or made to fulfil their ideals, each 
in turn loses its distinctive character in the unity of 
the whole; and in the end the colourless white light of 
formal identity succeeds to the coloured rays of the 
spectrum of personal experience. As an abstraction, 

'A discussion between Prof. B. Bosanquet and the present writer, 
on this and related points, may be referred to in the Psychological 
Review, 1902-03. 

^ The position has been worked out very brilliantly by the school of 
British neo-Hegelians, Bosanquet, Bradley, Creighton, and others. 



200 Genetic Interpretation 

the super-personal loses both the concrete immediacy 
of the mystic's feeling and the qualitative concreteness 
of the knowledge and will postulated by intellectualists 
and voluntarists. 

8. It remains true, however, that in the resort to 
personality, considered as a synthesis in which opposing 
functional elements are united, the requisites of a solu- 
tion of the problem of reality are better realised than 
in any other of the theories mentioned. Its limitation 
is, that just in the full realisation of the self, the op- 
position between the person and the thing, and also 
that between distinct persona, is made most acute. 
There would seem to be no way to obviate this diffi- 
culty — apart from the resort to religious mysticism 
— except by a re-examination of the entire movement 
of consciousness, with a view to detecting some 
further reconciling motive. As we have intimated 
above, the question is this: is there any experience in 
which the self realises itself, not as in opposition to 
the ^^ other,'' but as in the other? Such a type of ex- 
perience, projected on the broader screen of the world, 
would seem to be what the various solutions — ration- 
alist, voluntarist, affectivist, each isolating a partial 
motive — have alike sought for. It would also issue 
in a philosophy in which personality, understood 
in the broad sense of "experience," would be funda- 
mental. 

The way to such a point of view has been prepared 
for, in my opinion, by the attempts to develop the 
theory of feeling on the epistemological side. This 
theory, fragmentary as it has remained, and spo- 
radic in its recurrence, nevertheless promises to 
take on the form of an articulated and intelligible 
doctrine. 



Immediate Theories — Synthetic 201 
§ J. The Synthesis oj Feeling 

9. Platonic Love.^ In the "divine love" of Plato, 
the earliest and in many respects still the most inter- 
esting attempt to reach a synthesis of this kind was 
made. Plato develops his theories of the good and the 
idea and finds that these both alike lead to the highest 
idea or God. God, the supreme idea, is also the supreme 
good. It is reserved for feeling, however, to realise the 
idea of God, as being both absolute reason or idea and 
absolute end or good, in a single intuition. This takes 
the form of the immediate contemplation of the divine, 
the state called "divine love." The mediation of the 
real through ideas and that of the good through ends, 
both intrinsic elements in Plato's philosophy, issue in 
the realisation oj God in immediate feeling. 

Plato is not, however, simply to be classed with the 
religious mystics. His love is indeed religious, because 
the supreme idea is God; and it is also mystical, because 
it is a state of feeling which of itself gives no account of 
its object. But it is none the less a synthetic result, 
in which the elements of reflection pass into a higher 
immediacy ; it is not a mere lapse into feeling, after the 
abandonment of thought. 

This last statement is reinforced in view of the aes- 
thetic factor in the Platonic love. This love takes the 
form of an immediate dwelling upon the perfect and 
ineffable, a rapt contemplation in which perfection is 
realised and immortality attained. In it there is the 
response of the divine reason in man to the divine 
goodness and wisdom of God. In thus realising the 

' On this and the succeeding headings of this chapter, the treatment 
of W. D. Furry {The Msthetic Experience, the historical part, especially 
chap, vi.) will be found suggestive. 



202 Genetic Interpretation 

absolute idea, the contemplator grasps the aesthetic 
ideal; for this ideal, that which the artist imitates and 
that of which he creates the semblance in the work of 
art, is for Plato the archtype or idea of the actual thing 
of nature. ^ 

The tradition of Platonic love divided itself, in the 
historic event, into two currents. The religious motive, 
involving the personality of God, passed into the mysti- 
cism of Plotinus and Boehme, as we have already seen; 
and the philosophical motive took on a more psycho- 
logical phase in the attempt to locate the function of 
feeling and appreciate its epistemological value. This 
latter is the beginning of what we may call Affectivism. 

10. Affectivism. In its simplest forms, this was 
simply an attempt to isolate the psychological basis of 
mysticism and so to justify it. In the German mystics, 
Eckhart and Tauler, at the beginning of the fourteenth 
century, the heart — so to translate the German term 
Gemuth as used by them — the affections, the entire 
conative-affective determination of personality, is in- 
volved. The heart, as over against the reason, is the 
complete revealer of reality ; it takes up and completes the 
work of thought. It is a synthetic function; one of im- 
mediate realisation, not one of analytic comprehension. 

' Cj. Gomperz, The Greek Thinkers, vol. iii., pp. 102 ff. In the Sym- 
posium of Plato, we read: " He who has been thus instructed in the things 
of love . . . will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty . . . 
absolute beauty, separate, simple, and everlasting, which without 
diminution and without increase, or any change, is imparted to the 
ever-growing and perishing beauties of all other things. . . . This, 
my dear Socrates, is that life above all others which man should live, 
in the contemplation of beauty absolute. . . , Remember how in that 
communion, only beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will 
be able to bring forth not images of beauty but realities, for he has not 
hold of an image, but of reality." As translated in Bakewell's Source- 
Book in Greek Philosophy, pp. 156 f. 



Immediate Theories — Synthetic 203 

11. Constructive Affectivism. The function of 
apprehension that appears in the movements of the 
heart and in "illumination," in general, was further 
defined by the mystics of the Renaissance in the six- 
teenth century. They developed the Aristotelian 
doctrine of the imagination, which was looked upon as 
mediating, in various ways, between sensation and 
reason.^ Imagination completes the detached data of 
sense, building them up into ideas, and offers prelimi- 
nary schemata or ideal constructions to the reason. 
This is an anticipation of Kant's view of the schematis- 
ing imagination and on the whole a clearer statement 
of it. It also suggests the modern doctrine of the as- 
sumptive or experimental function of the imagination.^ 

It is interesting that this should have been hit upon 
by writers of a mystic cast of thought. It constitutes 
an important step in the development of mysticism 
out of the status of emotion and sentiment into that 
of a rational constructive theory. If the imagination 
in its normal working accomplishes the results formerly 
attributed to emotional intuition and ecstasy, then this 
type of apprehension may be put down as one of the 
recognised functions of cognition. 

12. A synthetic working out of the topic is not to 
be found in these mystical writers, but their view should 
be taken account of in any theory, such as our own, 
which finds in the imagination the intellectual skeleton 
about which the elements of affective synthesis take 
on their higher form. It is in the schematising and 
prospecting imagination that mental constructions of 

^ Qf. on this passage the writer's History of Psychology, Lond. ed., 
vol, i., pp. loi f. 

2 The application of this view to the "semblant" products of play 
and art is spoken of later on. 



204 Genetic Interpretation 

all sorts — ^knowledges, ideas, ends — are released in 
some measure from the strict control of fact and utility, 
and rendered available for the more direct realisations 
in which the self unites itself with its object. Without 
this reconstruction of the object in semblant form by 
the imagination, no intrinsic reconciliation of the objec- 
tive and subjective would be possible. It is just in 
this respect, indeed, that the theories already examined 
alike fail. They either subordinate one of the opposing 
terms to the other, or conceal them both beneath a 
covering of feeling or intuition. An essential recon- 
ciliation demands a function in which the root of the 
opposition between subject and object is removed, and 
the dualism of inner and outer controls cured at the 
source. That function, we are convinced, is the 
imagination. 

13. Faith. The next step toward the rational 
theory of the affective is the "faith philosophy," 
especially as we find it in the writings of F. H. Jacobi. 
In Jacobi, however, it is not the intellectual framework 
that is under investigation, but the attitude of mind 
and the method of procedure found in immediate 
apprehension. This attitude, he declares, is one of 
faith, which differs both from the rational conviction 
produced by proof, and from the credulity of childish 
trust. It is the attitude of immediate acceptance by 
the mind, when in the presence of reality, sensible and 
rational alike. ^ And the appropriateness of the object 

' Jacobi's view recalls to mind the later theory of Brentano who makes 
the function of judgment an original active attitude of acceptance or 
rejection. But to Jacobi faith, although it may be excited in response 
to argumentation, is not limited to this; it is more universal and also 
less fallacious than intellectual conviction. 

Another position interesting to recall here is the theory of "second 
thought" of the Franciscan, Duns Scotus, who held that a suggestion 



Immediate Theories — Synthetic 205 

to excite this attitude becomes the criterion of reality. 
The real is that which manifests itself in a way to 
excite our faith. 

14. This is a step away from mystical ecstasy toward 
the theory of intuition; and indeed Jacobi identified 
faith with the pure reason of Kant, finding it to be, 
however, a state of immediate feeling. As a further 
determination of immediacy on the subjective side, it 
is an advance; but in its characterisation as a state of 
faith, it does not reveal the motives of a genuine affective 
synthesis. It should be supplemented, on the cognitive 
side, by some motive which would render objectively 
valid the objects of faith. Taken simply as such, 
''fideism" — as the faith philosophy has been called — 
is more subjective, on the formal side, than intuitionism 
which developed from it; but it is little less blind, on 
the material side, than the mysticism in which it had 
its origin. It needs just the doctrine of the imagina- 
tion, or some equivalent, to supply an intellectual 
framework: some process of construction of the true 
and the good in a form which faith may utilise without 
coming into opposition with actual fact or unfulfilled 
desire. The reconciling immediacy, we may say again, 
must be one of real synthesis of cognitive and active 
factors. 

§ 4. The JEsthetic Synthesis 

15. The synthetic reconciliation we are seeking has 
been found, more or less incidentally but none the less 
really, in the aesthetic experience by three of the great 
thinkers of history. Each of them represents a move- 
coming into the mind as a "first thought," had to be actively embraced 
or accepted by the will, to become a "second.'thought," to which reality 
and the agent's responsibility attached. 



2o6 Genetic Interpretation 

ment of thought at its climax — at a time when all the 
difficulties of alternative logical hypotheses had become 
evident. They are Aristotle, Kant, and Schelling. 

(i) In Aristotle, the motives of earlier thought met 
and mingled. The subjectivism of the Socratic appeal 
to the inner world and the objectivism of the scientific 
and cosmic points of view required synthesis and recon- 
ciliation. In Plato's thought, the absolute idea and 
the absolute good each demanded place in the real, in 
God; and in Platonic love an affective mode of recon- 
ciliation appeared — having important aesthetic value as 
we have seen — which came to its culmination in the 
mysticism of Alexandria. 

In Aristotle, this reconciliation passed from the status 
of feeling to that of theory. The distinctions between 
potentiality and actuality and between matter and 
form, required that God be pure form, pure actuality. 
As such, his existence or being is one of eternal self- 
contemplation; he is apart from the worlds, which are 
held to him and to their proper place and movement 
by the spiritual principle in them. They are moved 
by love to God. In this cosmic theory, a sort of con- 
crete illustration is given of the love by which the 
spiritual part of man seizes upon the reality of God. 
In return, God dwells upon the universe as upon a work 
of art, a completed whole in which the ideal of the 
assthetic imagination is presented in sensible form. 

1 6. It would not be difficult, of course, to exaggerate 
the theoretical importance of this first synthesis; it is 
still semi-mystical and sufficiently figurative. It mingles 
love with law, spiritual with cosmic forces. But when 
we remember that Aristotle's physics was teleological 
in principle, not mechanical, and that the end or telos 
was pure form, quite free from matter, we see that it 



Immediate Theories — Synthetic 207 

is not so lacking in relevancy as might at first appear. 
It was also not to go far astray from his metaphysical 
principle for Aristotle to find in the artist's ideal, and 
in its apprehension through contemplation, the point 
at which the teleological movement of things comes to 
its point of repose in the completed picture present to 
the contemplation of God. If there is an absolute 
intelligence or experience, and if the sensible world is 
objectively apprehended by it, does not aesthetic con- 
templation afford the best analogy by which to repre- 
sent the relation of the one to the other? 

17. (2) To Kant, another of the three thinkers 
mentioned, equally urgent alternatives were presented. 
Logical rationalism had developed into dogmatism 
and formalism ; sensational empiricism, into scepticism 
and materialism; spiritualism into intuitionism and 
religious mysticism. In Kant, these philosophical 
oppositions repeated themselves in the form of closer 
distinctions between reason and sense, the pure and 
the practical, form and matter. Theoretical reason 
lost itself in a maze of antinomies and did not reach 
reality. Practical life assumed or postulated the real, 
but gave no adequate reason for its confidence. The 
inference was plain that life without insight can not 
achieve its full end, and that reason without content 
can not people the dwellings of life. 

Is there, it may be asked, any more intrinsic bond 
between the true and the good, between the theoretical 
and the practical reason, between the "nature" which 
intelligence presupposes and the "freedom" which 
morality assumes? Is there any bond between the 
formal or a priori as such which the reason legislates, 
and the concrete facts and motives of life which sensible 
experience contains? 



2o8 Genetic Interpretation 

In the Critique of Judgment, Kant finds, or at least 
intimates, a mode of reconciliation of thought and 
nature, or as he puts it of "nature and freedom," in 
the domain of feeling, in the judgment of aesthetic taste. 

1 8. The distinctive object of the judgment of taste 
to Kant is not the objective content itself; this owes 
its form to rational and practical judgments. In the 
judgment of taste, on the contrary, we have the a 
priori principle of the purposiveness, suitableness, or 
fitness of the world for apprehension by the mind (in 
the case of the judgment of the beautiful), and of the 
mind for the apprehension of the world (in the judg- 
ment of the sublime). But while aesthetic contempla- 
tion remains formal and regulative in its principle of 
judgment,^ still in the accompanying experience of 
aesthetic pleasure and its contrary, we have immediate 
concrete intimations of the larger relations of harmony as 
between the mind and its objects, and as among the facul- 
ties themselves.^ Thus the place of mind in the whole 
of reality and the meaning of reality for the mind are in 
a measure disclosed by being translated into feeling. ^ 

19. An important adjunct to such a synthesis, if it 
is to be effected by means of the eesthetic experience, 

^Cf. Basch, Revue Philosophique, Jan. 1912, pp. 23 f. 

' "The aesthetic predicates (to Kant), at all events the beautiful and 
the reverse, are to be explained as consequences of the greater or less 
ease with which the particular and the universal are united in the con- 
crete apprehension of the thing" (R. Adamson, The Development of 
Modern Philosophy, vol. i., pp. 226-7). The universal is the subjective, 
the particular the objective factor. 

3 It is here that Kant reaches, but does not develop, the postulate 
of a monistic principle, by which the distinction between the soul and 
the world, freedom and nature, is abolished. He still pursues his quest 
for the "thing in itself." "There must be," says he, "a ground for 
the unity of the supersensible, which lies at the basis of nature, with 
that which the concept of freedom practically contains." {Crit. of 
Judgment, Bernard's trans., Introd., p. i.2.) 



Immediate Theories — Synthetic 209 

is the theory of the imagination. We have noted the 
use made of the imagination in the theory of the aesthetic 
by Aristotle, and the extension of its cognitive r61e by 
the ItaHan mystics. In Kant, we find a doctrine of 
"schematism, " in which a part is assigned to the imagi- 
nation not only in the formation of special productions 
such as those of art, but of all the normal products of 
knowledge. The schematic imagination, arising be- 
tween perception and thought, is a mediating con- 
struction. It throws the manifold of sense, as by a first 
synthesis, into schemata or programmes for the further 
work of the intelligence. It is a sort of functional link, 
making easier the passage from sense to reason, and 
lessening the formality of the intellectual categories. 

20. Taken together, these positions seem to afford 
materials for a synthesis of will and reason in the 
domain of aesthetic appreciation. Kant intimated the 
nature of such a synthesis, as residing in the constructive 
role of the aesthetic imagination; but if he had carried 
out his idea consistently, it would have taken the form 
of a synthesis in the domain of formal ideals, effected 
by the judgment of taste, which reports a priori the 
harmony of thought and things.^ Feelings of 
pleasure are only incidental to these formal relations. 

It is plain, in any case, that Kant did not fully utilise 
his doctrine of the schematic imagination. The concrete 

' Too much importance should not be attached, indeed, to the aesthe- 
tic intimation of such a ground of unity or synthesis, in Kant; since for 
him there are others equal or superior to it, notably that found in the 
purposiveness shown in the organisation of living creatures. Such 
intimations are empirical points of view taken up for purposes of inter- 
pretation rather than intrinsic features of "criticism" as such. I am 
inclined now to think that in another place {History of Psychology, 
Lond. ed., vol. ii., pp. 24 f.) I attributed too definitely to Kant the 
intent of an explicitly aesthetic reconciliation of pure and practical 
reason. 
14 



210 Genetic Interpretation 

schema of imagination was for him merely a phenom- 
enal product, a step in the ladder of empirical func- 
tions. It did not suggest itself to him that it was one 
in nature and role with that judgment of taste by which 
the synthesis of ideals was effected. This would have 
broken down the distinction between the formal and 
the empirical. 

Instead, therefore, of overcoming the opposition 
between the phenomenal and the noumenal, between 
sense and reason, between will and intelligence, it 
presents, at the best, a new and formally more synthetic 
ideal of reason, that of taste. The objective value of 
this ideal is still open to all the ambiguities of the 
distinction of the phenomenal and the real. Granted 
that in ideal beauty one may discern a pattern of ideal 
truth and of ideal goodness existing in harmonious 
unity, how far, it may then be asked, does this secure 
truth and goodness in the elements of the actual works 
of art we admire. And if it does, what is the mental 
function by which this synthesis is achieved? In other 
words, is there an empirical synthesis, a real union of 
cognitive and active factors, in the aesthetic experience 
itself? This Kant might have found to be the case if 
he had proceeded out from the schematic function of 
the imagination as he himself recognised that function. 

It is this defect of undue formalism that further 
theory should attempt to remedy. Instead of starting 
out with the formal and universal, we should start out 
with the empirical and concrete. The synthesis we 
seek is not one to be welcomed as fulfilling the exigencies 
of logical and formal construction, but one to be re- 
cognised as bringing to light, in actual experience, a 
motive of reconciliation. 

21. The movement in the direction of a constructive 



Immediate Theories — Synthetic 211 

affectivism, in the sense of pancalism, as developed 
below, received in Kant, however, when all is said, a 
powerful impulse. He suggested reasonable ground 
for finding the union of will and reason in feeling, and 
for finding this feeling, as had been proclaimed by 
Platonic mystics and Aristotelian absolutists alike, 
present in the exercise of the cesthetic judgment. 
Moreover, he confirmed the role of the imagination, 
as supplying to art its cognitive framework — a posi- 
tion also suggested by earlier thinkers. What is still 
lacking, however, is the integration of this entire 
imaginative mode of synthesis in the body of concrete 
experience ; so that we may say that it is possible always, 
in the life of action and thought, to rest upon and enjoy 
— to realise, in short — a beautiful reality. This task 
is to be accomplished by psychological research and 
analysis, rather than, as in Kant, by the critical selection 
of one among several formal alternatives. 

22. (3) A third thinker, Schelling, found in aesthetic 
contemplation a synthesis of the factors recognised as 
urgent in the philosophy of his time. The romantic 
assertion of the self, by Fichte, in the form of absolute 
self-consciousness, had reduced nature to a negation; 
nature was merely the limitation posited by the ego 
in the process of its development. To Schelling this 
failed to do justice to the reality of nature. Rather, 
said he, nature is an earlier stage of the ego itself: its 
unconscious, prehistoric stage. The same motives of 
evolution work in the unconscious forces of matter, until 
they break through in the consciousness of organised life. 

The dualism, then, between mind and matter, con- 
scious and imconscious, was to Schelling one of evolution ; 
mind slumbers in implicit form in nature. And the 
question arises — is there any mode of apprehension in 



212 Genetic Interpretation 

which their real identity of essence shows itself? Does 
conscious life have any way of testifying to the absolute 
identity of the spiritual principle, and to the unity of 
all reality? 

To this question Schelling replies by pointing out 
three functions or activities of which conscious spirit 
shows itself possessed: the activities of knowledge, 
practice, and art. In the last named of these, the 
spirit attains the intuition by which it realises its iden- 
tity with nature. In art, the conscious claims the 
unconscious as one with itself. 

23. Besides this synthesis of mind and nature in 
art, by which the philosophical principle of identity is 
justified, Schelling finds in art also another essential 
synthesis, that of knowledge and practice. In aesthetic 
enjoyment, a faculty of heavenly fancy, a spiritual 
intuition breaks down the opposition between the 
theoretical and the practical, and brings the spirit into 
consciousness of its unity with itself. ^ 

' Of these two syntheses, that of the identity of nature and mind, 
reveaUng itself objectively by a genetic or evolution process, remained 
in German speculation. But the latter, the synthesis of theoretical 
and practical in art, was not influential. On the contrary, the contrasted 
motives of thought and will worked themselves out respectively in the 
opposing systems of Hegel's intellectualism and Schopenhauer's 
voluntarism. 

The resort to art made by this latter writer, Arthur Schopenhauer, it 
is interesting to note, is of a different kind. To him the aesthetic is not 
a synthetic experience, but a temporary detachment, by which one gets 
a momentary deliverance from the torments of a life of unsuccessful 
struggle. The will is for the moment suppressed. Art is a retreat, a 
luxury. Schopenhauer overlooks the element of real life in art, the 
inclusiveness of art. "He forgets," says Hoffding {History oj Modern 
Philosophy, Eng. trans., ii., p. 234), "the sympathetic absorption which 
indeed presupposes that we attribute worth to the aesthetic object." 
The real deliverance is found by Schopenhauer in the state of quiescence 
of the ecstatics or mystics, in which the will-to-live of the individual 
is lost in the "nothingness of Nirvana." 



Immediate Theories — Synthetic 213 

The following passage from Adamson states clearly 
the spirit of Schelling's teaching. 

"Theoretical consciousness terminates in that abstract 
attitude of inner reflection in which self seems to be simply 
and absolutely opposed to all concrete content. From this 
position escape, reconciliation of difficulty, is found in 
practical activity, in the realisation of self in action or con- 
duct. But practical consciousness, nevertheless, even in its 
highest development, still leaves unreconciled the thinking 
subject, conscious of himself, and the sphere within which 
his activity lies ; or, put otherwise, the highest phase of prac- 
tical consciousness brings sharply before us the opposition 
between the theoretical and the practical, that opposi- 
tion which in the Kantian system is formulated in the distinc- 
tion between the realm of nature and the realm of morality. 
Fixed, necessary, universal — these are the predicates as 
far as theoretical comprehension of fact is concerned: 
spontaneous, free, individualising — these are the predicates 
we assign to the practical self. Reconciliation of the opposi- 
tion — a conception which shall give due recognition both to 
the universality and fixity of nature as known, and to the 
spontaneity, freedom, of spirit as realising itself in action — 
is given in the representation of nature as a kingdom of 
ends, and in the attitude of consciousness thereto which 
finds expression in art. The artistic view of nature wherein 
reality is taken as a living whole, the expression throughout 
of spirit — this, for Schelling, is the highest reach of thought, 
the final attitude of speculation." 

And again: 

"Doctrine of knowledge, doctrine of morality, doctrine of 
art, these are the three divisions of the philosophy of mind; 
and the progress is, in each of them, of the same general 
type. The advance, as it were, from each stage is effected 
by the appearance of differences or problems which call 



214 Genetic Interpretation 

for a higher, richer, more comprehensive mode of con- 
sciousness.^" 

24. These positions of Schelling's have the great 
merit of showing the essential need of synthesis, and 
of pointing out the factors which must be included in 
it; he also finds the positive mode of consciousness in 
which the reconciliation occurs to be the aesthetic, the 
art consciousness. The great dualisms of genetic 
process — mind and matter, knowledge and practice — 
these are, as we have found, the chronic oppositions 
of the mental life ; the thorn in the side of a rational 
theory of things. 

But the solution offered by Schelling, while in our 
opinion pointed in the right direction, is too speculative 
and also too rhapsodical to be convincing. It vibrates 
between the abstract indefinite and the mystic im- 
mediate. The art consciousness is not shown to have 
the requisite synthetic content. 

The persistence of the dualistic alternatives, and 
their refusal to down at the waving of the aesthetic 
wand, is shown in this philosopher's subsequent philo- 
sophical thought.^ In his very latest work he con- 
cludes that speculative formulation of the nature of 
reality must remain merely formal; and that the 
essence of the real, its content, is apprehended only 
in direct experience of life and in the testimony con- 
cerning that life found in history. 

'R. Adamson, The Development of Modern Philosophy, vol. i., pp. 
266-7. 

2 In Schelling's second period, seeking to state the principle of identity 
which the aesthetic consciousness reveals, he reached an undefinable 
Spinozistic absolute; and then, in his last period, aiming at making 
this concrete, his thought swings over to mystical expressions borrowed 
from Bruno and Boehme. 



Immediate Theories — Synthetic 215 

What Schelling's resort to the aesthetic really lacked, 
then, was an analysis of the art consciousness and its 
products, which would show that it really fulfilled the 
role of reconciliation and synthesis which he assigned 
to it. ' 

'Our exposition confines itself to these historical thinkers; but other 
important suggestions have also been made as to the epistemological 
and synthetic value of the assthetic, such as those of the poet Schiller 
and Lotze. 

Of the recent attempts to deal with the problem, that of A. T. Ormond 
(Foundations of Knowledge,if)oo, pp. 227 flf.) is the most interesting. 
See Appendix B. 



CHAPTER XII 

RESULTS OF THE HISTORICAL SURVEY: THE DEMAND 
FOR AN INTRINSIC SYNTHESIS 

§1. The Presupposition of Truth and the Postulate 
of Value 

I. Our brief exposition of theories has thrown into 
relief the alternatives of speculative thought, and 
also its shortcomings. As to the alternatives, we 
find that they exhaust the possibilities of implication 
and postulation. For understanding these terms about 
in their usual meaning in the discussions of logic, ^ we 
now see that the final problem lies in the interpretation 
of the relation between these two. What is the ground 
of correlation, if there is any such ground, between the 
realities implicated or presupposed by the faculties of 
cognition on the one hand, and those supposed or 
postulated by the faculties of appreciation, valuation, 
will, on the other hand? 

One of these sorts of reality, that of implication, 
is called actuality ; it resides in things taken as existing 
in a cosmological or ontological order, in a sense finished, 
and constituting a completed whole. It presupposes 
a sphere of existence of some sort — fact, truth, relational 
implication of part in a whole — a sphere set up as 

'Cf. Thought and Things, vol. ii., chaps, v, x. 

216 



Results of the Historical Survey 217 

fundamentally characteristic of reality. Reality must 
exist ; it must be actual, in order to be real. 

The other type of reality is reached in the play of the 
active and appreciative life. To it the final form of 
reality is that of something taken to be satisfying or 
good, approved of the faculties of appreciation, desire, 
and will — in a broad sense, ideal. The existing or actual, 
in order to be real, must also be valuable. But the 
final form of value is not reached as actual or as a predi- 
cate of existence; it is supposed, assumed, set up as a 
demand, a model, an ideal; it is a "postulate," not a 
presupposition or an implication. 

2. Our historical survey has shown the rivalry of 
theories of these two types: on the one side, theories 
ranging from materialism to refined subjectivism, 
characterised by the presupposition of actuality. 
Ideality for them is derived, secondary, consequential. 
On the other side, there are the theories of ideality, 
finding in the actual merely the sign, symbol, locus, of 
the values with which the life of will and sentiment is 
charged. Here the theories range from pragmatism to 
absolute voluntarism and idealism of value. 

Later philosophy has lent itself to the task of recon- 
ciliation. Its constructive effort is to bring together the 
presupposition of actuality and the postulate of value. 
On the whole, it has not succeeded; for in each case it 
has had to extend the range of one of these terms into 
the field of the other. 

On the one hand, knowledge, we are told, is after all 
motived by will and has its ideal in a value : hence the 
justification of voluntarism. But granted the point, 
still does not the real need a point of actuality in which 
its values may reside? — can the ideal float in a void 
without presupposing an existing real? — and how can 



2i8 Genetic Interpretation 

we get this but through processes of knowledge? — 
how estabHsh values except by establishing facts and 
truths? 

So in turn intellectualist theories "cut under" the 
postulate of the voluntarist. The presupposition of 
existence, it is said, underlies the meaning of value; 
the only real value is that which is achieved, attained — 
in short, that which is found in the realm of existence 
or actuality. Ideal values are chimerical ; "that which 
a man hath, why doth he yet hope for?" 

To this the voluntarist replies: "Yes, but why then 
do you pursue the ideal you call truth? Why do you 
join in the chase to which all life and all creation lends 
itself — the chase after ideals? Is the satisfaction of 
striving and the joy of aspiring, worshipping, contem- 
plating, to be entirely left out of our account of things? 
Are the requirements of will and feeling, the postulates 
of God, freedom, morality, to be simply neglected when 
we attempt to give an account of the whole nature of 
things?" 

3. In the Kantian Critique, a great attempt at a 
morphology of reality, no permanent adjustment of 
theoretical and practical is reached. The practical 
postulate is given precedence as guaranteeing its object ; 
but the distinction between phenomenal and noumenal 
gives the case in advance to the intellectualist; for it 
makes a division in the modes of actuality and reserves 
reality for that contained in reason as opposed to sense. 
The entire question for Kant becomes this : how is 
reality according to reason possible? The answer is, 
perforce, a sort of formalism. 

The Post-Kantian theories vibrate again between 
intellectualism and voluntarism, under various names, 
the whole controversy becoming, however, after Kant, 



Results of the Historical Survey 219 

more transcendent. This has motived the reaction to 
experiential and pragmatic theories, to mysticism, and 
to the solutions to be found in a synthesis based on 
feeling. 

4. This rivalry between the presupposition and the 
postulate — between the rational implication and the 
desirable ideal — shows itself also in another form. 
The theories of actuality are not content to accept the 
various modes of the actual which experience reveals; 
this would be too pluralistic. All actuality must be re- 
duced to one type: it must be perceptual, or rational, or 
moral, or spiritual. So the actualist shifts his ground, 
proposing an ideal of unity for reality, and introducing a 
monistic postulate in order to overcome the dualisms 
and pluralisms of his own requirement of actuality. 
The great dualism of mind and matter is in this way 
overcome when the presupposition of mind is carried 
over as a postulate into the domain of matter, as in 
spiritualism and theism. Materialism, on the other 
hand, extends the sphere of matter, in the form of brain 
cells or chemical elements, in order to explain the 
reality of mind. Its presupposition is also converted 
into a monistic postulate. 

So through all the turns of systems of monism, an 
implication or presupposition, quite legitimate in its 
own sphere of control, is erected as a postulate in another 
sphere which stands in contrast or opposition to the 
first. ^ So one has, in the mosaic of philosophy, as many 
monisms as one could desire. ^ 

5. Our historical sketch has also brought out the 

' A procedure that is in direct violation of a canon of genetic logic. 
See Thought and Things, vol. i., chap, i., sect. 26, v., the " Canon of 
Modal Unity. " 

^ On pluralism and the grounds of monism, see below, chap, xiv., § 2. 



220 Genetic Interpretation 

fact that a reaction tends to show itself, whenever 
speculation has reached its full maturity, toward the 
recognition of experiences of immediacy, experiences in 
which the dualisms and oppositions of actual and ideal, 
the presupposed and the postulated, have not been 
developed, or in which the motives which produce these 
oppositions spend themselves in states of fulfilment or 
exhaustion. Hence appear various attempts to find 
an immediacy, whether of revelation or of intuition or 
of inspiration or of contemplation, in which a purer and 
fairer vision of the real emerges upon the gaze of man. 

The really synthetic approaches to affectivism have 
not gone far; but the beginnings are significant, as 
we have seen. In attempting to carry this line of 
thought further, we are simply interpreting the results 
of detailed investigations, which point plainly in this 
direction. Before proceeding further, however, we 
should say a word in defence of the method we employ, 
since it seems to reduce the high ontological problems 
of abstruse speculation to the level of the modest 
undertakings of genetic and empirical science. 

§ 2. The Jruitjul Method, genetic 

6. In the earlier work already cited, we have dis- 
tinguished certain points of view from which the activi-, 
ties of knowledge may be considered.^ The three 
points of view respectively of the "logician's logic," 
the "metaphysician's logic," and the "knower's logic" 
were described and compared ; and the point of view of 
the knower himself was adopted and defended. Reasons 
are there given for the adoption of this standpoint, 
together with the genetic method to which it lends itself ; 

' Thought and Things, vol. i., chap, i., § I f . 



Results of the Historical Survey 221 

but we have now arrived at a point at which a more 
complete justification, both of standpoint and method, 
is possible. If we were right in claiming that the pro- 
cesses of knowledge, by which realities are discovered, 
and the indications by which belief in them is justified, 
can be traced out and set in evidence relatively to one 
another, then when this is done in detail, we should be 
able to use the results in more than a defensive and 
apologetic way. 

In fact, we can now, I think, directly refute both the 
logical and the metaphysical methods of approaching 
the problem of reality, in favour of a psychological and 
genetic method. 

7. The logical method, in distinction from the on- 
tological or metaphysical, consists essentially in giving 
to logical principles an absolute, and unconditional 
value, apart from the material of knowledge to which 
they have application. Universality and necessity are 
said to attach to them, being marks of their validity, 
in the very nature of things. Reality therefore, must 
be logical in character — it must be constituted by 
these principles or reached through them. Whatever 
further sorts of realisation or determination we may 
find in experience or in nature, these are to be looked 
upon as being at best secondary and ancillary to the 
logical. The logical mode of dependence and deter- 
mination is final and fundamental. 

8. Two principal criticisms of this procedure may 
be made, both justified by the results of genetic research. 

(i) In the first place, it has been shown that the 
universality and necessity of logical rules and laws are 
marks and characters which arise in the growth of 
experience of certain sorts. Like all other psychical 
characters, they have their genetic history, and repre- 



222 Genetic Interpretation 

sent the culmination of long-continued functional 
processes. While we would not contend that their 
genesis prejudiced their validity, or explained fully their 
force — this would be to illustrate the fallacy of "compo- 
sition," too often committed by geneticists^ — still we 
claim that the fact of this natural genesis forbids our 
taking these principles out of their context and treating 
them as having miraculous and mysterious ontological 
virtue. What they are worth is shown only in what 
they accomplish; it appears in the role they fill in the 
development of the whole meaning of the real. 

As matter of fact, just in the marks by which logical 
principles show themselves to be universal and neces- 
sary, they become in actual life practically useless. We 
do not argue by them in any strictness ; we violate them 
whenever they come into conflict with other imperatives 
of a different order. Even science admits their tentative 
value and hypothetical force. So far from dictating to 
us the realities we are to accept, they seem, when stated 
to us, either to come from a distant and unfamiliar world, 
or to be of the commonplace force of the majestic for- 
mula of identity, "A = A." Our intimate realisations 
occur in the realm of the concrete, singular, immediate, 
pungent experiences of feeling and action; and in the 
sphere of knowledge we leave out perforce, in our gener- 
alisation and abstraction, those marks of direct appre- 
hension by which the real is made most fully available. 
Logical thought does not destroy or invalidate the object ; 
on the contrary, it carries further our valid apprehension : 
but, by reason of its method of employing universals, it 
serves us in a very partial and inadequate manner. 

'See Thought and Things, vol. i., chap, i., sect. 23. There may be 
more in the full meaning of a psychical content than the conditions of 
its genesis express. 



Results of the Historical Survey 223 

Universality and necessity, so far from being presup- 
positions of reality in all its aspects, are merely ideals 
arising in the operation of partial and restricted pro- 
cesses of cognition. To read them in advance as 
prototypes of the real, or as its constitutive principles, 
is to content ourselves with the chaff of empty form, 
when we might have the wheat of the real life. 

9. The second point is this: the same procedure in 
kind may lead, and often has led, to the similar reifica- 
tion of the practical universals, the moral imperatives, 
at the expense of the theoretical. Moralist and volun- 
tarist have as much right to hypostatise their principles 
as the logician has. But the realities they reach by this 
method are in many ways opposed to those of logic. 
They involve the postulate of personal freedom and 
absolute good, present in the single experience and 
realised in the flux of feeling and action. Who is to 
decide between these rival claimants? We may decide — 
we do so every day — not between them, but both for 
and against them both, on occasion. The practical 
norms, like the theoretical rules, are ideals appearing in 
the course of the working out of concrete psychological 
and social motives. They have their function here and 
here only. Practical rules compose the valuable but 
fallible guide of life just as logical laws compose the 
valuable but tentative directory of thought. 

10. The alternative to accepting this simple result 
and giving up the pretensions of formal absoluteness of 
either kind, is the metaphysician's choice: he plunges 
into the flood of ontology. ' In view of che balanced 
sceptical outcome of Kant's Critique, which reacts to 
justify a frank empiricism, the post-Kantians postulate 
an absolute thought or will, whose logic or dialeccic 

^ See the remarks on Bradley's views, in Appendix C. 



224 Genetic Interpretation 

reveals the real. The question comes to mind whether 
philosophy is to continue to thrash out the straw of 
these different but similar absolutisms? 

A negative answer to this question is embodied in the 
various instrumentalisms, intuitionisms, affectivisms, 
pragmatisms, and mysticisms of the present day. Our 
own negative, now to be stated, is based upon the 
results of empirical research; it denies the validity 
of the ontological point of view altogether. 

While cognitive process claims to establish the real 
apart from thought — an ontological real — this reality has 
always the meaning given to it in the development of 
experience. The trans-subjective reference, if accepted, 
justifies a separate reality; but one whose characters 
are known and confirmed in the special sphere of control 
to which the reference is made. The reality of a second 
person to the knower, for example, is not the same as 
that of a physical thing; each has reality of a circum- 
scribed and relative sort. So while consciousness seems 
spontaneously to disown her own children, by finding 
them to be foreign and independent of herself, still they 
remain her children. 

This has appeared, in the realm of reflection since 
Descartes, as the presupposition of all modern thought. 
The subjectivistic standpoint is persistent. It also 
appears in those modes of consciousness in which the 
trans-subjective reference is, in certain circumstances, 
abrogated, even in the cases of objects to which it 
ordinarily attaches. The same content — say a building 
— may be an object of imagination, of perception, of 
memory, of aesthetic contemplation. Now which of 
these is to stand as the final mode of its reality? — which 
of them is to be considered che ontologically real? 
Why should the mode of perception, or the mode of 



Results of the Historical Survey 225 

thought, take precedence over the others? For prac- 
tical purposes, perception is no doubt the most useful ; 
but for aesthetic purposes it is less interesting; and 
for social and emotional purposes, it may be quite 
imavailable. All of these forms of quasi-reality are 
represented in the growth of consciousness ; and to give 
the so-called ontological form characteristic of knowledge 
a monopoly of reality is entirely without justification. 

To illustrate further, why has not the ejective con- 
sciousness, which reads a mental life into the object of 
presentation, or the inter-subjective, which considers 
reality as fundamentally social and as possibly endowed 
with an over-individual consciousness — why has not 
either of these as good a right to enter a claim to exclu- 
sive authority? 

12. If by the metaphysician's logic we mean a 
procedure that assumes or postulates a reality onto- 
logical in its character, separate from knowledge, and 
in some way responsible for the world and all that is 
therein, we can not accept it. It makes the recognition 
of the trans-subjective the exclusive weapon of the 
theory of reality. The real is something apart from 
experience. On the contrary, there are as many weapons 
as there are contacts of mind with objects, modes of 
apprehending and enjoying objective things — and 
subjective things as well — and the true way of under- 
standing reality involves the use of them all, for the full 
realisation of the nature of things. 

So we come again to the plain story of conscious 
process and the meanings it achieves. The logicist 
and ontologist are, on the whole, not true to psychology. 
They isolate and reify and ontologise single and partial 
psychological motives, and pass some one of them off 
for the whole. 
15 



226 Genetic Interpretation 

The difficulty of getting any understanding of reality 
would seem, however, to be increased if, while denying 
the adequacy of the logical and ontological, and of every 
interpretation which proceeds by the carrying out of a 
single psychological motive only, we at the same time 
hold that it is in conscious process itself that reality is, 
in some fashion, to reveal itself. If these several revela- 
tions are fragmentary and contradictory, and if all 
trans-subjective resource is forbidden to us, then do we 
not land in a sceptical subjectivism or a positivism 
based on the special sciences? 

13. These are the alternatives currently allowed to 
those who deny the rationalist's and absolutist's theses ; 
but it remains to point out a further alternative, 
which the entire body of genetic research appears to 
justify : the alternative seen in the recognition of modes 
of conscious process in which, instead of finding opposed 
motives contending for place, we see experience estab- 
lishing, of itself, a synthetic mode of apprehension. To 
our mind, the course of the history of thought makes it 
plain that the quest for such a mode of experience 
presents the only hope of a lessened strife among points 
of view ; for in such a mode of process evidence would be 
present to show that the entire system of experience is 
expressive of reality, and that only in the organisation 
of the whole are the respective roles of this and that 
function to be made out. We have seen that such a 
quest has been made in certain directions. Synthetic 
experiences such as those of the self, religious faith, 
mystic illumination, have been pointed out. These 
have at least rendered testimony to the need of carrying 
out to their legitimate outcome all the hints that con- 
sciousness gives as to its unreduced and undivided 
epistemological calling. 



Results of the Historical Survey 227 

14. Accordingly, we may claim without hesitation for 
this way of approach to the problem of interpretation, 
the following three virtues. 

First. It pursues the sober empirical method of 
observation and analysis, controlled by the actual 
movements and events of the mental life. 

Second. It does explicitly, what all the other theories 
do more or less tacitly or clandestinely: it finds in 
experience itself the sole means of approaching the 
real. Reality, in the last analysis, is what we mean by 
reality. Reality apart from all meaning for experience 
is an absurdity or a mere word. 

Third. It is constructive, in the sense that it does 
not deny the epistemological value of any of the mental 
functions, or the force of any of the theories which are 
based respectively upon one or other of the functions; 
on the contrary, its aim is to discover the synthetic 
adjustment of their claims within the larger whole. 



PART III. ESTHETIC IMMEDIACY 



229 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE INTRINSIC SYNTHESIS, ESTHETIC 

§1. The first Step: imaginative Semblance 

IT remains to make good the statement, already put 
forward in a preliminary way, ^ that in the aes- 
thetic contemplation of an object experience achieves 
the synthetic and full apprehension of reality. Our 
historical note has shown not only that some such 
result is pointed to, as the necessary supplement to the 
outcome of reflection in its course up to the present, 
but also that this type of solution has been indicated 
in a sporadic way, notably by mystical writers and by 
those idealists who have valued the integrity of person- 
ality. The results accruing to our knowledge from new 
analyses of the aesthetic function and its objects, and 
the equally new and important insights into the reality 
and nature of affective logic, enable us to pass on rapidly 
to our conclusion. The following pages will have per- 
force to refer to the treatment of the aesthetic and of 
affective logic as given elsewhere, for details on these 
subjects. ^ 

I . The aesthetic experience is so rich in meaning that 

^ See the citations made in the Preface. 

* As stated in the detailed treatment of these two topics, in Thought 
and Things, vol. iii., the new view as to the aesthetic is associated es- 
pecially with the name of Lipps, and the theory of affective logic with 
that of Th. Ribot. 

231 



232 Genetic Interpretation 

we are able to recognise no less than four suggestions of 
dualistic meaning whenever it is experienced, each 
contributing, however, to the immediacy of the whole 
effect. There is, in the aesthetic object, first, the char- 
acter of imaginative semblance, which suggests the 
ordinary dualism between idea and fact; there is, 
second, the character of idealisation, which suggests the 
dualism between fact and end; there is, third, the 
character of self-embodiment or personalisation, sug- 
gesting the dualism between the self and the not-self; 
and finally, fourth, there is the character of singularity, 
suggesting the dualism between singular and universal. 
All these shadings of meaning are positively present in 
the genuine appreciation of any work or art. It 
remains to show, however, that instead of developing 
themselves, these strains of dualism lose themselves in 
the rich synthesis of immediate contemplation. With 
all its varied suggestions, no state of mind is more 
fully one and undivided than that of aesthetic enjoy- 
ment, when once it is fully entered into. 

2. No synthesis of motives in consciousness, of a 
sort to overcome its dualisms and oppositions, can take 
place, of course, while the motives to these dualisms 
and oppositions remain fully in force. The difficulties 
may be glossed over, as in mystic states, or denied, as 
in ex parte theories ; but only by their effective removal 
can place be made for a vital union and synthesis. 

This release from the bondage of urgent and di- 
vided motives takes place in the imagination — a re- 
lease from the restraints of the external and from the 
impulsions of the internal'; from the conflicts of will 

' See Thought and Things, vol. i., chap. vi. Various writers, notably 
the poet Schiller, have pointed out this role of the imagination, par- 
ticularly in play. Schiller goes further in the same direction, suggesting 



The Intrinsic Synthesis, Esthetic 233 

and intelligence; from the opposition of means and 
ends, and of idea and fact. What is imagined is, in a 
sense, in the mind ; it is no longer strictly limited to the 
conditions of rival control which, in the prosaic actual 
world, impose their oppositions and contradictions upon 
us. 

This is the case not merely in the realm of irrespon- 
sible fancy, in which the contents of imagination are 
unorganised and chaotic, fugitive and valueless; but 
also, in a more restricted sense, in the orderly products 
of the constructive imagination. The child's playful 
fancy, although brought constantly into contact with 
the things of external fact and the thoughts of other 
persons, develops its dramatic renderings of life and 
things in a world of semblance or imaginative reinstate- 
ment. The playful imagination is the earliest field 
in which the possibility appears of a more or less inde- 
pendently developing system of presentations, having 
the organisation due to the existing external control, 
but free from that control itself. It has indirect 
reference to the external, and in the same fashion, on the 
subjective side, to the inner world; but taken simply 
for itself, it is a world of a certain freedom. The im- 
pulses of free construction work themselves out and 
the possibilities of personal freedom begin to realise 
themselves. This develops, on the one hand, into the 
experimentation of serious scientific method, and on 
the other hand, into the responsible constructions of 
the creative imagination in art. 

The important thing to note is that here we have 

that art aids in the formation of harmonious and virtuous character, by 
opening up an imaginative field in which crude desire and instinct may 
be directed into the channels of spiritual morality. Cf. HofEding, 
History of Modern Philosophy, ii., pp. 133-4. 



234 Genetic Interpretation 

a third alternative in the development of motives, a 
realm differing from that of the true and also from that 
of the good. The true is found in the realm of objective 
control, that of facts and relations; the good in that 
of the inner life, where satisfactions are desired and 
attained. These furnish the fundamental alternatives 
which run through life and theory alike. But here in 
the realm of the imagination there is a detachment, a 
free play of ideas. It affords a sort of common ground 
to the two realms of serious thought and strenuous ac- 
tion. Both the true and the good become " semblant " ; 
they are set up for imaginative purposes, subject to 
many of the liberties of a free and constructive fancy. 
Play presents the preliminary loosening of the bonds of 
fact and value alike; imagination takes advantage of 
this, in the interest of science and art. 

3. This removal of the limitations presented by 
the dualism of controls is, however, merely preliminary. 
The world of imagination, like those of fact and value, 
enters into new phases with the ripening of the motives 
of conscious reflection. The gradual hardening of the 
dualism of the inner and outer worlds, mind and body, 
brings a new phase also in this third world of imagina- 
tion, in which the opposition is broken down in a new 
freedom of construction. The aesthetic takes its place 
along with the scientific and the practical, doing for 
them what, at the lower stage, the playful fancy does 
for the perceptual and active. The scientific imagina- 
tion constructs hypotheses in the interests of further 
control in the domain of truth ; the idealising imagina- 
tion erects ideals and postulates in the interests of the 
achievement of higher practical and social values; the 
aesthetic releases both of these from their partial and 
contrasting ends, the true and the good, and unites them 



The Intrinsic Synthesis, Esthetic 235 

in an interest whose end is intrinsic to the construction 
itself. It sweeps beyond the truth set up by knowledge 
as complete and absolute, and also beyond the good set 
up by the will as full realisation of the self; and depicts 
the real, perfect in all its aspects, as present in the 
semblant object itself. How it is able to do this can 
appear only from the analysis of the aesthetic interest ; 
and by what right it is considered valid for the appre- 
hension of reality, only from the meaning of the aesthetic 
object, the work of art. 

4. Put broadly the question is this: granted that 
in the semblant constructions of the aesthetic imagina- 
tion, the direct controls external and inner do not insist 
upon their oppositions, and that the contradictions of 
ordinary serious life and practice no longer appear, what 
further then do we find in this mode of apprehension? 
Do we have the right to go beyond this negative result — 
which leaves us in the realm of direct feeling, of mystic 
trance, or of the mere eulogy of beauty — and see here 
a mode of constructive mental process, inclusive of 
knowledge and will? 

§ 2, Msihetic Interest synthetic in the sense of Intrinsic 
or Autotelic 

5. The grounds on which we may with confidence 
hold that in the imaginative semblance of aesthetic 
contemplation a real synthesis is found have been 
already intimated^; here it remains to gather them up 
and show their force. 

(i) In the first place, in the aesthetic construction an 
interest is at work which does not terminate upon a new 
or unfamiliar object, but upon an object which is already 

* See Thought and Things^ vol. iii., chaps, x.-xiii. 



236 Genetic Interpretation 

the end of both the theoretical and practical interests. 
The aesthetic is not excited by that which is foreign 
to the other interests; on the contrary, it is concerned 
to keep their objects intact. It is only in that which 
is in some measure true, good, or both together, that 
we discern the beautiful. 

The distinguishing thing, therefore, about the aes- 
thetic interest is its end : it seeks the intrinsic meaning 
of the object, not a meaning foreign to or beyond the 
object. In this respect it is in contrast with the other 
great interests, whose objects are instrumental to further 
ends. In aesthetic contemplation, such interests are 
arrested in their normal course; each is asked to be 
content with its gains. In this fashion, the opposition 
which the exclusive pursuit of any one of them would 
produce is avoided. The aesthetic interest is motived 
by a reading of the object as being both true and good, 
with a meaning which the semblant imagination is 
charged to interpret. 

6. (2) The imagination interprets the object for 
what it is and stands for ; not for what either ideal alone, 
theoretical or practical, would make of it. Each of 
these, as ideal, is exclusive; each demands the negation 
of the ideal of the other, or at least its subordination, 
as part of its own fulfilment. Absolute truth must be 
neutral, disinterested, says the intellectualist ; absolute 
value must be personal, immediate, say the voluntarist 
and the mystic. Both parties make their claim in the 
pursuit of their respective ideals, but in contravention of 
the actual reports of experience. The true object is 
also valuable, and the enjoyment of something does not 
exclude its being a fact of the external world. Here it 
is that the intrinsic aesthetic interest enters in and 
demands the revision of the data with a view to dis- 



The Intrinsic Synthesis, Esthetic 237 

covering their full and intrinsic meaning and ideal. 
The true and the good are not merely realised alterna- 
tively or in succession, but together, as factors in the 
larger ideal of the perfect. 

In the freedom offered by the semblant imagination, 
this interest in intrinsic completeness and perfection 
comes into its own. There is no hindrance from the 
external, since the demands of fact and truth are 
respected. So also with the good, the useful, the practi- 
cal: these are not infringed. The interests of the self 
are united and renewed in the imaginative construction ; 
the divisions of theory and practice are healed ; the way 
is open to the reading of the object in the light of a 
synthetic consummation. This ideal takes the place of 
the others, not by reason of a capricious or merely 
sentimental tendency to do so, but by the legitimate 
reading of all the characters, recognitive and apprecia- 
tive alike, which the object presents. This becomes 
the true ideal imposed upon the objective data; it 
gives them their fullest rendering. They are no longer 
mutilated in the interest of a remote design. Art is 
synthetic in the sense, exactly, that it rids other interests 
of their narrow and exclusive pretentions, and causes 
them to join hands in a common task. Their outcome 
becomes its outcome. The art interest alone does not 
distort its data. 

One may ask by what right the aesthetic interest 
supersedes and reinterprets the results of knowledge 
and practice? To this we may reply: by the right that 
any more integral and complex genetic process may 
supersede and include those that are less so. All 
development shows this. ^ 

^ It illustrates the general principle upon which the theory of "genetic 
modes " is based : see the writer's Development and Evolution, chap. xix. 



238 Genetic Interpretation 

§j. The Esthetic Object synthetic in the sense of 
A-dualistic 

7. The interest of aesthetic appreciation demands, as 
we have seen, an object that unites the true and the 
good. It demands, that is, one that illustrates the 
external control and also allows the satisfaction which 
comes from the realisation of the inner principle or 
self. The former is present in the construction of a 
neutral external content of knowledge; the latter in 
the absorption of those properties of the object which 
give satisfaction, as being in some sense contributed to 
it by the self that enjoys it. 

The question of further analysis is then this : does the 
aesthetic object satisfy the demand for the intrinsic union 
of the two control principles, subjective and objective, 
upon which the more superficial dualism of knowledge 
and practice depends? We might conceive an interest 
which could find both truth and good in the object, so 
erecting a fiu-ther synthetic ideal, while at the same 
time maintaining this ideal as objective and separate 
from the subject, the thinker or the producer. It is 
in somewhat this sense that the Aristotelian absolute is 
aesthetic; while present to the contemplation of God, 
it still remains objective. Within the sphere of the 
aesthetic, the distinction would seem to be reflected 
in that between the producer, the artist, to whom the 
work of art is an embodiment of himself, and the specta- 
tor or contemplator, who retains in some degree an ob- 
jective and critical attitude. We have to ask whether 
the genuine aesthetic interest stops with the erection 
and contemplation of a purely objective construction? 

8. Many recent analyses point to a decidedly 
negative answer to this question. Detailed expositions 



The Intrinsic Synthesis, Esthetic 239 

and discussions have brought out the facts of the 
"personalising" of the object by the movement of 
aesthetic interest. The facts of esthetic sympathy,^ 
EinfuhlMng or Empathy, now so fully established in 
fact and discussed in theory, come to fill in the picture. 
In aesthetic appreciation, the object is read as possessed 
of the very mental and moral life of the observer, so far 
as this can stand for other spectators also, not by proxy 
or by mere sympathy, but by the very conditions of 
its construction and by virtue of the interest which 
motives its apprehension. It is fully aesthetic only in 
so far as it is fully the vehicle of the life of the thinker 
who sees it and feels its force. 

In this ffisthetic personalising, indeed, we see the 
mind's own successful protest against all those move- 
ments by which experiences fall into the two classes, 
representing minds and bodies. In vague and inarticu- 
late form, this protest is repeatedly made before the 
aesthetic proper is fully reached. The personification 
or "animation" of nature in primitive culture, the 
presence of the motives of ejection and introjection^ in 
the social and religious life ; the postulates of mystical 
union and direct communion in religious idealism — all 
these show the demand for some means of healing the 

* According to the theory of Einfuhlung or sesthetic sympathy, in 
every case of sesthetic enjoyment the work of art is found to be endowed 
with Ufa, movement, mind; and not only so, but the spectator goes on 
to identify this Hfe within the object with the general aspects of his 
own. For detailed explanations and citations of authorities, see Thought 
and Things, vol. iii., chap, xi., § 3; and cf. chap, xv, §6, below. 

^ Avenarius, while showing in his theory of "introjection," the nec- 
essary development of the personalising motive, nevertheless holds 
that its dualistic results are mistaken and must be revised in view of 
"immanental" analysis. See R. Avenarius, Der menschliche Weltbe- 
griff, and the exposition given in the writer's Mental Development in the 
Child and the Race, ^d ed., pp. 322. 



240 Genetic Interpretation 

schism between subject and object, and of asserting 
the oneness of experience in a whole which is conscious 
of its oneness. 

9. In the aesthetic, this reassertion of unity is 
secured. The semblant reconstruction is a personifica- 
tion. The aesthetic content is shot through with the 
control proper to the self. The object is not merely 
presented to me for my observation or criticism; but 
in it I find the inner world mirrored; in it I feel my 
own cognitive and active powers establishing them- 
selves. It is not a world foreign to my own life; for in 
this world, presented semblantly to my gaze, I find 
realised my community with other selves. 

The lesson of it is that the diremption of controls 
has been, all the while, that merely of partial functions, 
of instrumental adjustments, of convenient interpreta- 
tions. The whole story is not told until there is an 
entire experience, reintegrating in its own life and 
movement the several phases of the real which mediated 
truths and values disclose. 

§ 4. The JEsihetic Ideal synthetic in the sense of 

Syntelic 

10. With this imderstanding of the synthetic char- 
acter of the aesthetic interest and its object, we see in 
what sense the aesthetic ideal is also one of synthesis. 
If the interest is a union of motives otherwise divided 
and contending, and if these motives are now held to a 
relative completeness in the personal life of the knower 
or producer, the ideal must be one proper to such an 
interest: the ideal of a fully achieved and perfected 
object. If the interest is sui generis, pursuing neither 
truth nor practice in itself, but their permanent and 



The Intrinsic Synthesis, Esthetic 241 

effective union in a larger meaning, then its ideal will 
include theirs, in so far as their ideals can join in pro- 
moting its own. It can not take up the standpoint or 
pursue the ideal of either as such; this would be to 
forsake the beautiful. Esthetic appreciation finds its 
ideal in a whole which is a perfect and immediate unity, 
not a mere composition of parts. 

For this reason, aesthetic enjoyment and the pursuit 
of its ideal seem, at times, to be temporary, sporadic, and 
capricious, even when their high quality and synthetic 
character are admitted. The partial interests involved 
may remain so compelling, urgent, and attractive that 
the £esthetic synthesis may not fully establish itself. 
The man of practical affairs is occupied with utilities, 
arrangements, adjustments of things; the man of 
science with hypotheses, discoveries, the relationships of 
things. They have neither time nor training, in view 
of these pressing interests, to pursue esthetic enjoy- 
ments, which require calm and deliberation. But the 
artist knows the better way. The aesthetic habit of 
mind, present in his case, is as truly real, though not so 
common, as the theoretical and practical habits of mind. 
The time may come, and the stage of human culture, 
when the realisation of aesthetic values will supply 
the last and final ground of judgment, both individual 
and social, if not of the truth and utility of this or 
that objective product of thought, still of its compre- 
hensiveness for the insight and enjoyment of mankind. 
The domination of collective and mystical interests 
long prevented the development of the logical and 
utilitarian; man only gradually freed his faculties and 
attained the milieu and interests of science. May it 
not be that the aesthetic is waiting in turn the evolu- 
tion which will synthesise the human interests, now 
16 



242 Genetic Interpretation 

so scattered, in the realm of intrinsic values found in 
fine art?^ 

It is also, no doubt, because of their synthetic char- 
acter that the states of mind of aesthetic appreciation 
and production are so difficult to enter into and main- 
tain. Art escapes almost entirely the ken of many; to 
many more it seems vague, light, and superficial. They 
do not understand its language. This is true, however, 
not only of art, but of all complex synthetic mental 
processes, such as those of penetrating intellectual 
activity, of prolonged practical effort, of sustained 
attention. Yet the aesthetic, at least cesthetic appre- 
ciation, is not altogether like these; since the content is 
in a sense given to it, its composition is already effected. 
Whether the aesthetic value really takes effect upon the 
observer is a question either of the latter's intellectual 
understanding of the subject and its suggestions, or of 
the quality and relative purity of the art by which the 
subject is treated. Worst of all are those distractions 
of a practical or intellectual sort which are due to uned- 
ucated or trivial habits of mind, or to mistaken efforts 
to make art the servant of instruction or edification. 

But the ideal remains in spite of these difficulties of 
realising its force in the concrete case. It is an ideal 
of the completeness and imity of motives of all sorts in a 
whole which the inner life can absorb and call its own. 
In and through all the variations and changes which the 
object may undergo, the observer feels the movement 
of his own inner imitation and sympathy. The work 

^ In French culture, the progress of cesthetic standards and interests 
toward this high position in life and thought is to be observed, in my 
opinion, more than elsewhere. C/. the paper "French and American 
Ideals," in the Sociological Review, April, 1913, pp. 106 flF (printed also 
in Neale's Monthly, April, 1913). 



The Intrinsic Synthesis, Esthetic 243 

of art is objective to his private thought; but its ideal 
is the embodiment of the human Hfe with which his own 
Hfe is identified. ^ 

11. This is reflected in certain characters which 
mark the cesthetic as such, within the whole of the 
imaginative and semblant functions, and distinguish 
art from its counterfeit, play. 

We have seen elsewhere in what respects art differs 
from play.^ In art, the motives of the serious life are 
not reinstituted fragmentarily and capriciously, for 
mere recreation or amusement, as they are in play ; but 
systematically and truthfully, in a system in which the 
judgments of value, appreciation, ideality, are sem- 
blantly reconstructed. Art thus becomes in its own 
sense serious. It is not a mere imitation of the actual; 
nor is it a caricature of it. It is a re-reading of the 
actual in the more systematic, perfect, and satisfying 
form which the abrogation of partial controls and the 
removal of their oppositions renders possible. The 
reality of the external is not lost ; since the reconstruc- 
tion preserves the gains of judgment and insight, both 
theoretical and practical. Nor is reality in the inner 
world lost or impaired ; since the work of art is charged 
with its very spirit and life. But with this union of 
essential realities goes the fact of their union in the 
larger artistic reality of which they are factors. Their 
separate ideals lapse when their meanings are taken 
up in the larger end of unity and completeness. As 
such the ideal of art is "syntelic, " 

12. This makes plain the reason for another differ- 
ence between the mere fancy of play and the imagina- 
tion of fine art — the difference found in the ideality of 

I See below, chap, xv., sects. 28 ff. 

» See Thought and Things, vol. iii., chap, x., § 4. 



244 Genetic Interpretation 

the latter. Fine art always idealises. It reads the 
given in terms of its spirit, and carries it on to comple- 
tion. In this the character of the imagination reveals 
itself in its prospecting and interpreting aspect. Not 
only does the esthetic interest have an ideal, but its 
ideal is that which the imagination is able to make 
out of the actual content. The aesthetic object not 
only possesses the quality of completeness or perfection, 
as far as its materials go, but it suggests the ideal in 
which all perfections unite and all virtues inhere. 
Completeness of spatial form, of harmonious colouring, 
of rhythmic movement, of dramatic arrangement, of 
truthful relation, of moral quality, even of eesthetic 
proportion and relation, all merge in that ideal of ideals, 
the perfect work of art.^ The character of beauty 
realised in some special way in each beautiful thing 
is idealised; completeness goes on to become ideal 
completeness. We are in the presence here, therefore, 
of a mode of experience in which the union of the actual 
and the ideal is reached. Actuality is realised in the 
completed object, which is a synthesis of the true with 
the good, and of the self with objective things. In it 
all meanings of actuality merge and fuse in one. But 
ideality is also realised in its turn, in the full or ideal 
completeness of which the essential aesthetic quality 
of the given work of art is a sample and model. This 
final sort of synthesis, that of actual with ideal, is 
brought out more fully below. 

§5. The Esthetic Reality inclusive and privative 

13. The truth of the foregoing determination of the 

' Such would be the entire world of contemplation as it would appear 
to an infinite experience. See below, chap, xvi., § i. 



The Intrinsic Synthesis, Esthetic 245 

nature of aesthetic reality is fully confirmed from the 
side of negation. Esthetic interest is of the exclusive 
type; it is "privative," in the general sense of seeing 
nothing but its own select and appropriate object.^ 
Negation by privation is in this respect in sharp con- 
trast with logical negation or denial, on the one hand, 
and with exclusion by rejection, on the other hand. It 
is a mode of acceptance so selective that the entire 
world of possible things becomes non-existent for the 
purposes of the privative interest. 

From this it follows that, from the point of view of 
the ideal, the positive aesthetic achievement involves, 
in so far, not only the negation of all other ideals as such, 
but also the refusal to recognise them as rival or even 
possible constructions. The completed imaginative 
whole in which the aesthetic interest would be satisfied 
is at once fully comprehensive and radically intolerant. 
This is a result of the inclusiveness of the art-content 
itself. The entire system of truths, with the sort of 
reality it contains, and also the entire system of worths 
with their inherent real values, are both incorporated 
in their integrity in the esthetic reinstatment. Only 
that reference and control are lacking by which, when 
taken alone, they are partial and mutually exclusive. 
The reality attaching to the artistic realisation becomes, 
when once achieved, the sole title to acceptance of any 
content whatsoever. The very negations of logical 
relationship, and the oppositions and conflicts of 
practice, themselves enter into the whole of the posi- 
tively esthetic real. In art the discordant notes of 
lower and more partial processes are blended in a larger 
harmony. 

' See Thought and Things, vol. iii., chap, x., § 5, and cf. above, chap, 
vii., §§ 4. 5- 



246 Genetic Interpretation 

14. While, however, this abrogation may be real in 
respect to the modes of negation attaching to partial 
processes such as those of knowledge and practice, the 
question remains as to the phase of esthetic negation 
by which the positively unsesthetic is recognised, the 
Eesthetically bad, the ugly. We can see how the motive 
of logical denial, by which an opposition between two 
equally positive contents is established, may contrib- 
ute a relative part to the aesthetic reinstatement of a 
larger system; the negative is relative to other aspects 
of the system, all of which are taken up in the grasp of 
the aesthetic interest. We can see also how the prac- 
tically bad, that which is personally, socially, or morally 
rejected by a reaction of repulsion or avoidance, may 
have place also as part of the larger aesthetic synthesis. 
Art may depict both error and evil. But what shall 
we say of that mode of the unfit which art itself deter- 
mines as bad over against itself, the ugly, the hideous? 

15. In the earlier discussion,^ we have seen that, in 
determining the ugly or ^sthetically bad, the sesthetic 
interest encounters aspects of reality — incoherence, 
error, bad value of various sorts — established by other 
modes of process which limit or resist its procedure. The 
ugly consists of those elements, both objective and 
subjective, of actual existence which do not allow of 
idealisation, or which do not allow of the interpretation, 
as part of personal experience, which cesthetic experience 
involves. This is to say that the beautiful is estab- 
lished in the midst of a world of things considered as 
actualities of fact and value, and deals with what it 
finds. 

But for the aesthetic itself, this result is not final. 

' See Thought and Things, vol. iii., chap, x., § 6. la this and the follow- 
ing section (16), the fuller statements of chap, xv., § 5 are anticipated. 



The Intrinsic Synthesis, ^^sthetic 247 

It is part of the meaning of the aesthetic ideal to negate, 
by its intent of privation, any other ideal than itself. 
It is an ideal of acceptance which does not recognise 
anything to avoid. When taken in its completeness, 
therefore, the eesthetic would no longer even recognise 
the ugly, except as it would exist in the world of fact 
in which all actualities have a certain incomplete and 
non-£esthetic existence. 

We find something of the same sort, though springing 
from a different motive, in the moral sphere.^ Moral 
exclusion in the world of fact may establish the exist- 
ence of the morally bad ; but the ideal of the good does 
not carry in its postulation the recognition of the ideally 
bad, save in the contrasting terms of an ideal of what 
is to be made non-existent by the assertion of the good. 
In the religious sphere, also, the ideal excludes the 
existence of the devil, considered as a bad or malignant 
deity, although subordinate bad personages are recog- 
nised in the sphere of fact.^ 

The difference between these cases, the morally and 
religiously bad, on the one hand, and the ugly, on the 
other hand, is this: the sesthetic ideal ignores the 
ugly, except in the realm of fact, by bringing the beau- 
tiful in its own way into a new realm of reality from 
the point of view of which the ugly, the sesthetically 
bad, does not exist. This actualising of the positive 
alone, without the negative, the moral and religious 
postulates do not succeed in accomplishing. It is 
the prerogative solely of art. 

In its nature as both idealising and realising its ideal 
in this way, art recognises the cesthetically bad only 
to deny it. It recognises its existence as fact, by right 

^ Thought and Things, vol. iii., chap, ix., § 4. 
" Above, chap, vii., § 6, 



248 Genetic Interpretation 

of the inclusion of the subordinate motives of truth and 
practice ; but it denies its right to a place in the realm 
which art itself estabhshes. 

16. One may ask whether this recognition of the 
ugly as fact does not vitiate the claim of the ideal to 
establish itself as the exclusive and final meaning of 
reality. This point is taken up again below ; Mt is 
the important question of the rival claims of the idealis- 
ing and actualising interests over again. Here we may 
note merely that the aesthetic interest itself does not 
establish the ugly. The ugly is established through the 
checking or failure of that interest. It remains true, 
as it is here our intention to show, that the negative 
aspect of the aesthetic ideal lends confirmation to the 
claim of comprehensiveness and finality of the art- 
meaning. The universe, considered as a work of art, 
must be a complete whole, not only as including all 
phases of existence in the realm of fact or actuality, but 
as also, in virtue of its positive nature, denying to these 
any further title to reality save that which it itself lends 
to them. 

It is of some interest to note that by the active opera- 
tion of this motive of privation, by which one sees and 
enjoys just the one thing taken up for contemplation, 
one may fall into certain mystic states of absorption 
and trance. These states have often an aesthetic 
coloiu-ing by reason of their tranquillity, their character 
as being self-contained and sufficient. But they 
represent artificial growths upon the state of mind 
found in true esthetic contemplation. For in the latter 
the attention is fixed upon the semblant objective 
content, by which it is informed but not dazed. The 
self takes on the form of this intelligible content, and 

* Chap. xiv. § 5. 



The Intrinsic Synthesis, Esthetic 249 

realises its full meaning reasonably and with entire 
self-possession. 

^6. Esthetic Reality a synthesis of Universal and 
Singular 

17. The sharp contrast existing between theoretical 
and affective logic — between intellect and feeling in 
their respective renderings of reality — appears in the 
sphere of what has been called "community," with 
the contrasted meaning of "privacy." Knowledge 
is always common property; its reports are for intelli- 
gence generally; its objects always have the property 
of recurrence in objective fact, or in convertible and 
revivable experience, to which the meanings of gener- 
ality and universality attach, in different senses, in the 
course of the development of thought. The result is 
that the experience in which no reference to a common 
point of objective and stable confirmation is involved 
remains outside the scope of cognition. The strictly 
private as such, the singular, fugitive, unrelated state, 
the purely affective modification of mind, which has no 
reference to a thing of existence or fact — these remain, 
if they exist, the unexpressed remainder, the unknown 
real, haunting the house of rationalism and logicism, 
and asserting, in the name of immediate and mystical 
apprehension and faith, that "reality is richer than 
thought. " 

This may be summed up by saying that it is the 
province of knowledge to reveal the universal and gen- 
eral, the "common" ; it reports the singular and private 
only by those indirect means of description, analogy, 
and inference, which its characteristic processes permit. 
But its presupposition, its starting-point is generality. 



250 Genetic Interpretation 

18. The corresponding examination of the logic of 
feeHng* has revealed a series of functions in which a 
certain logic is also operative: an affective logic. But 
the embarrassment of such a logic is the lack of gener- 
ality and universality — the opposite to the embarrass- 
ment encountered by cognition. Its starting-point 
is the residue found in the private, the singular, the 
immediate, which the cognitive functions leave over. 
These aspects of the real segregate themselves in the 
inner control, the personal life, of the individual self. 
The development of interest, volition, sentiment, results 
in the apprehension of a series of personal and imme- 
diate values which, while carried over to things, are 
nevertheless established by processes mainly affective 
and active in character. 

This cleft extends through all the things of knowledge 
and thought; we know the thing, but we feel or ap- 
preciate its value. It is of the essence of my know- 
ledge of a thing that my thought, my judgment, my 
intuition of its character should hold for others by 
the very terms of the logic of knowledge; but it is 
equally of the essence of my taste, my feeling of its 
value, which is most real for me, that I can only in 
certain indirect and very relative terms forecast through 
it the character of your taste and appreciation. 

Feeling, in other words, has the presupposition of 
singularity and privacy; it reaches commonness, gen- 
erality, universality only indirectly by means of ejection 
and emotional abstraction. ^ It is only in those respects 
in which feeling reads its generalisations, its emotional 
constants, into the inner life of others, that something 
analogous to the general validity of cognition is realised. 

' Thought and Things, vol. iii., chaps, vi.-viii. 
" Ibid, vol. iii., chap. vii. 



The Intrinsic Synthesis, Esthetic 251 

And even then, it is subject to the rudest shocks of 
disagreement and lack of conformity. 

19. Now so long as consciousness is content to live 
a double life, a sort of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" 
existence of double personality, it may be now a 
logical machine turning out generalities, and again a 
sensitive plant shrinking from the direct touch of the 
real. But of course our life is not of this double sort; 
the self is one, and the two realities built up thus in 
relative opposition are fundamentally but one. Is 
there any way, we may ask, that known things can be 
directly felt, and that felt things can be at the same 
time also known? Is there any mode of apprehension 
in which the exclusiveness of each of these functions is 
lost in the inclusiveness of a new and more comprehen- 
sive synthesis? 

20. This is just the high role of the assthetic func- 
tion, as we have abundant reason to believe. 

The motives to such a synthesis fully reveal them- 
selves in the realm of experience itself. ^ All the char- 
acters of art unite in this full result. The relational 
objective whole necessary to the work of art — the 

^ We have found them objectively and genetically present in the two 
main stems of primitive art, which bloom respectively in the fine arts 
of decoration, on the one hand, and graphic and plastic representation, 
on the other hand. In the one, the representative arts, all that is 
cognised as common, general, and universal — every possible object of 
knowledge, in fine — is depicted in semblant and idealised form. In 
the other, the decorative arts, which have their root in the motive of 
self -exhibition, the impulse of the self shows itself in personal interest 
and effort and in the pursuit of individual value. In representative art, 
the cognitive impulse presses its end on to completion ; in decorative art 
the affective and self-promotive impulses reveal themselves, making the 
same claim. And in every work of art, these two factors are united in 
the unity of a single product which is absolutely unique in its force to 
each observer, while also universal as the vehicle of human expression. 
See Thought and Things, vol. iii., chap. xiii. 



252 Genetic Interpretation 

thing, situation, event depicted — reinstates, in its full 
and undiminished meaning, the commonness and uni- 
versality of truth, in all its varied forms. Nothing 
escapes the net of art, from relatively simple colour, 
sound, and other sensuous relations up to the abstract 
concepts of mathematics and the undefined affective 
suggestions of morals and religion. All are cast in the 
crucible, and recast in the forms of beauty, losing 
nothing of their truth. 

But as depicted, being semblant and ideal, not merely 
actual, they are open to appropriation by the other 
great motive of apprehension of the real — the motive of 
appreciation — by which the entire content is made 
singular, worthful, immediate, an end and not a means. 
The self enters in, sweeps out the chambers of empty 
form and generality, and peoples the house with living 
and real personalities. The real loses its neutrality 
as respects value, while retaining its relational form; 
it loses the multiplicity of general and particular in the 
imity of the mental life; it loses its separate and fixed 
mode of existence in the ownership of an indwelling 
spirit. This is no mere figure of speech; our analysis 
has made plain its motive and meaning. It might be 
put in the severe technical terms in which many of the 
expositions of the matter have been expressed. 

21. That we have here a new mode of the psychical, 
a synthetic immediacy, is shown in the fact that its 
universality and singularity are not, strictly speaking, 
the same as those of the functions of knowledge 
and feeling. I declare the work of art before me to 
be beautiful by a veritable judgment, having the 
synnomic force of an assertion of relation. But I 
mean something which is not merely true of the re- 
lational construction upon which my conviction of 



The Intrinsic Synthesis, Esthetic 253 

its positive character depends — that which all men 
may confirm — but something which is also true in the 
sense that it is synnomic of others' appreciation, along 
with my own. In the one act of appreciative judgment, 
I read your approval of the beauty of the work of art, 
as well as your recognition of its objective characters. 
I mean both that it fulfils the objective requirements of 
beauty — to which I attribute, more or less consciously, 
its cesthetic character, and which the experimental 
science of aesthetics charges itself to discover — and also 
that you will or should join with me in my judgment of 
appreciation. It has, in short, the universality of the 
cognitive construction which arises in the logic of 
knowledge, and also the universality of the affective 
disposition or attitude in which the universal of the 
logic of feeling clothes itself. Although, therefore, the 
role of the cognitive in the constitution of the object as 
universal is not interfered with, the whole is taken 
over and given the force of a general and syntelic value. 
It is judged true for the judgment of all, and it is 
appreciated worthful for the valuation of all. In it, 
therefore, theoretical and affective logic meet and flow 
together. 

22. The same is true of the singularity of the work of 
art; it is of both kinds. Despite its generality, the 
construction is singular in the sense that, as a product 
of the artist's inspiration and execution, there is but 
the one; it has the singularity of any isolated and im- 
duplicated object in the world. But this sort of singu- 
larity leaves out the aspect of value which makes an 
object singular to our appreciation. My friend Brown 
may be the only Mr. Brown I know ; but that does not 
describe him as my friend. It is with a meaning more 
intimately felt and enjoyed, that I call him "Brown." 



254 Genetic Interpretation 

In art, this latter sort of singularity, that of af- 
fective logic, is present to supplement the other, that 
of cognitive logic. Although a single objective thing, 
the work of art has for me a direct immediacy. It is 
both "one" for all men, and "one" for me alone. 
When I exclaim to you on its perfections, I mean both 
to point out its objective marks as representative and 
common to our joint perception, and also to appeal to 
your appreciation of its intimate value; expecting to 
find that you respond as I do to its power to thrill and 
move the individual observer. While, with you, I have 
knowledge of one sort of singularity, I can also sym- 
pathetically hope that, as respects the other sort, you 
feel with me. Here again, therefore, cognitive and 
affective logic meet. Both render undisturbed their 
singularities, as they do also their universalities, by 
reason of the semblant and imaginative character of 
the objective construction from which the dualism of 
external and inner control has been radically removed. ^ 

This is only to say that, for the full interpretation 
of the object, neither of the partial logics is adequate. 
Shall we give the epistemological task entirely to 

' One may ask whether this does not constitute a new dualism within 
the aesthetic itself; a dualism between community as general and 
singularity as private. But this is not a dualism, since there is no real 
opposition. It merely shows that if aesthetic contemplation does reveal 
the real, it must be a reality in which the aspect of common or general 
truth, open to all individuals, is included in the larger immediacy of a 
more comprehensive experience — a conclusion to which we are positively 
lead later on (chap, xiv., § i). 

One may ask, too, whether the generalisation due to recurrence, as 
of repeated experiences of the same work of art, does not destroy the 
singularity of the experience. The reply is that while rendering it an 
affective or "motive" general of the past, so to speak, it still does not 
exhaust the novelty and essential singularity of each new case which 
comes to illustrate this general (see Thought and Things, vol. iii, chap. 
vii., §§2 flf.). 



The Intrinsic Synthesis, Esthetic 255 

knowledge, when to do this is to cut off all the springs of 
valuation and to destroy altogether the creative and 
revealing functions of art? On the other hand, can we 
deny to knowledge its role, when the very skeleton of 
all valuation and artistic production is due to the work 
of cognitive and relational processes? Evidently the 
only, as it is the adequate, resource is to recognise the 
mode of apprehension in which the two great motives of 
thought and appreciation unite in a full and self- 
sustaining whole. 

23. It would seem to be our duty, therefore, in view 
of this presumption in favour of the eesthetic conscious- 
ness — based as it is upon detailed and convincing 
considerations — to raise finally the enquiry as to the 
meaning reality takes on when interpreted from the 
point of view of fine art. The logical or theoretical 
interpretation issues, as we have seen, in the view that 
reality is a system of fixed and neutral actualities, the 
nature of which is determined by positive science and 
by experimental and logical demonstration. Its reality 
is of the sort that cognitive process presupposes. It is 
the reality reached by the logic of cognition. The 
practical or ideal interpretation, on the other hand, 
makes of reality a system of values, as postulated by the 
appreciating and idealising consciousness, and achieved 
through the pursuit of ends. It is the reality reached 
by the logic of feeling and practice. What then, we may 
now ask, is the nature of reality as reached by the logic 
of cesthetic realisation, the logic of fine art? 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE ^ESTHETIC INTERPRETATION 

1. The full requirements of synthesis appear in the 
defects of the historical theories of reality. They seem 
to be met in what we have seen to be the characters of 
assthetic immediacy. It represents a synthesis in 
respect to interest, object, and ideal — all the aspects 
under which reality as apprehended may be viewed. 
It remains to bring out the interpretation which may 
be based upon this type of experience. Our exposition, 
here again, may be greatly abbreviated in view of the 
earlier researches to which reference has been made. 

§ J. Msthetic Realisation as reconciliation oj Presuppo- 
sition and Postulate 

The interpretation to which the resort to cesthetic 
experience leads is one based upon direct realising; it 
is therefore a theory of "immediacy," rather than one 
of the " mediate " type. This follows from the fact that, 
in this experience, the real-reference is not outward 
toward something else, but intrinsic, finding its ful- 
filment in the object itself. The aesthetic object is 
self-contained, detached, and privative of all other 
objects. It would seem then to be possible to distin- 
guish the type of immediacy present in the aesthetic. 

2. Evidently it is not of the "primitive" type, since 

256 



The Esthetic Interpretation 257 

its motives are extremely complex and synthetic. 
Even in the earliest forms of art, we find the two great 
factors of imitation and self -exhibition ; and the activity 
of the imagination is exercised upon materials of all 
kinds which represent simpler and more elementary 
processes. Hence the interpretation can not be simply 
mystical or emotional, of the type which results from 
the acceptance of reality as that with which our sense- 
experience brings us into direct contact. The theories 
of reality based upon this sort of immediacy — called 
"pure experience," "contact with things," "immersion 
in the stream of life," direct, anoetic, or a-logical 
"awareness" of things — get no support from the syn- 
thetic movement of the aesthetic consciousness. 

There remains over the type of immediacy repre- 
sented in theories based on transcendence or fulfil- 
ment, intuition theories in the main; and those based 
on reconciliation, personality theories in the main. 

We have seen that the former of these, the intui- 
tion theories, while taking many forms, imite in recog- 
nising intuition as the form, though possibly not 
the genetic outcome, of empirical knowledge; even 
what is transcendent and a priori must embody it- 
self in knowledge, to which it gives universality and 
necessity. We may say, therefore, that these theories 
recognise the immediacy of the ideals of knowledge 
in theoretical intuition, and those of practice in practical 
intuition. The difficulty, however, with each of them 
is that it represents one ideal so exclusively that it is by 
that fact unable to represent others. The ideals of 
truth and value remain in their fulfilment different and 
incommensurable. Truth, as given in the pure reason, 
is a system of rational implications and presuppositions ; 
value, as given in the practical, is a satisfaction and a 
17 



258 Genetic Interpretation 

postulate. The presupposition and the postulate, in 
short, remain finally unreconciled. 

3. Now the interpretation based upon aesthetic 
immediacy has no such difficulty; for while the aes- 
thetic ideal is one of fulfilment and transcendence, it is 
not for this reason that it is immediate. It is not an 
immediacy due to the exhaustion or abbreviation of a 
genetic process. Theoretical intuition, as we have seen, 
arises when the end term, the real control, in a process 
of mediation, drops away and the ideas present in the 
mediating context of related terms are taken to be 
absolute and independent realities. The hypothesis, 
instead of remaining experimental to discovery, a 
convenience of method, becomes the absolute axiom 
or the intuitive truth. On the other hand, in the case 
of the practical norms or intuitions, the reverse process 
is in evidence. Instrumental or mediating ideas, the 
means to the achievement of further ends, fall away; 
and the ends stands forth as absolute unmediated goods 
postulated by the active life. In each case, there is an 
abbreviated process, and an assumption of absoluteness 
and finality in what is known as intuition. 

In the aesthetic, this is not the case. The ideal is 
immediate, not as representing a final outcome and the 
result of emphasis laid on either means or ends, but as 
being in its own nature immediate, at whatever stage 
and with whatever content. It is immediate in the 
semblance of the child's imagination and the savage's 
admiration, as it is in the finished intuitions of the artist 
and the wrapt contemplation of the aesthetic devotee. 
Its immediacy, therefore, is not that of completed or 
mutilated function, but of synthetic and reconciling 
function; it is the essential union of truth with value. 

4. In the terms of genetic interpretation, this may 



The Esthetic Interpretation 259 

be put in general form. The reality of esthetic intui- 
tion is not the outcome of a partial mode of apprehen- 
sion of the real, either theoretical or practical; it is a 
state of essential and synthetic realisation. It is 
a union of the presupposition and the postulate, not 
only in their final intuitive forms but in each of their 
oppositions in the life of thought and practice. The 
real of the cesthetic ideal is intrinsic to its own process ; 
and this process has its genetic logic, as both knowledge 
and practice have theirs. The progression of the sem- 
blant imagination, uniting at each stage of mental devel- 
opment the interests of knowledge and action, issues 
in its appropriate object — not merely something pre- 
supposed as ground of knowledge or merely postulated 
as motive of faith, but realised as intrinsic presence. It 
is both true and good, but not for either of these reasons 
real; it is real because beautiful, and by this char- 
acter both true and good. The presupposition and 
the postulate are both replaced by the acceptance 
grounded in contemplation. 

§ 2, Msihetic Realisation as reconciliation of Acttiality 
and Ideality. 

5. Another type of interpretation, already men- 
tioned as based also upon immediacy and claiming to 
overcome the difficulties of "mediate" theories, insists 
upon the synthetic nature of personality. While taking 
many forms, as we have seen, what is essential to the 
theory is the claim that in the organisation of the self, 
taken as a whole, the various partial modes of appre- 
hension of reality are reconciled and completed. 

This point of view has many merits, but also certain 
radical defects. If it be the actual self, the objective 



26o Genetic Interpretation 

"me" of cognition, that is intended, the definition of 
the self only serves to make more radical the opposition 
between it and other objects, including other selves. 
For the process of actualising is common to all objects, 
selves as well as things ; things are as actual as the self. 
If, on the other hand, it be the subject-self, the "I" 
that is intended, it may be objected that this self can 
be given no content; for the subject-self is only the 
logical presupposition of the experience of the actual 
self, in which, exclusively, it takes on its concrete 
personal form. To give it any other reality is to land 
ourselves in some form of transcendence or mysticism. 

If we resort to the super-personal, as postulated in 
religious reality, we have again the conflict between the 
actual and the ideal. ^-^ God, if a concrete person, is 
actual but not ideal; if an ideal, he is not an actual 
person — that is the religious dilemma. Whichever is 
taken for real, the other is merely postulated. The 
super-personal becomes either merely personal or quite 
impersonal, a social fellow or an "unknown God." 

6. In the act of realisation, recognised in the theory 
based on aesthetic immediacy, the personal is not in 
opposition to the impersonal, the self to the "other." 
The very grounds of the opposition, the opposing 
theoretical and practical motives which produce the 
distinction, are removed. The semblant reinstatement 
of the content of knowledge is, by its very construction, 
charged with the impulsion of a developing mental 
life, of a self, of the self. The mind achieves a new 
unity in which its genetic diremptions are cured. 

In this respect, as in that last mentioned, the result 
is not attained at the limit only, at the ideal or as a 
desired outcome, it is a recurring and ever-present fact 

^ See above, chap, vii., § 3. 



The Esthetic Interpretation 261 

of experience. Every time that one admires a beautiful 
object or contemplates a work of art, one experiences 
the union of these motives of life which the partial 
interests of knowledge and action had divided. So 
that the ideal, the intuition, is of a personal life ; which 
is at the same time an objective content, not a mere 
postulate or analogy. It is present in each case of the 
entire series of experiences. Its final statement would 
be inclusive of all the creative achievements of fine art. 

7. In the aesthetic, therefore, the roots of the opposi- 
tion between actual and ideal are torn up, inasmuch 
as there is nothing left over in the ideal, after the 
cesthetic actual is realised ; the actual is then complete, 
both in its objective character and in its subjective value. 
Even the negative, the un^sthetic or ugly, disappears 
as we have seen, as soon as the positively aesthetic, the 
beautiful, establishes itself. If nothing remains to 
realise, there is no further reason to idealise; or — put 
in the reverse way — when the ideal is realised, the 
actual becomes ideal. 

§j. Esthetic Realisation as reconciliation of Freedom 
and Necessity 

8. A further problem, implied in that of the respec- 
tive claims of actuality and ideality, concerns the 
domains of necessity and freedom. Genetically con- 
sidered, it is a problem of the dualism of controls, which 
rtms through the entire mental life ; since the necessity 
found attaching to the objective and actual opposes it- 
self to the freedom foimd attaching to the inner life, 
practical and moral. The entire body of positive 
science, physical and mental alike, summarising our 
knowledge of the actual, reduces itself to the recognition 



262 Genetic Interpretation 

of laws to which a certain necessity attaches. Over 
against this, the self asserts its freedom of choice, its 
caprice of action, its moral responsibility for the achieve- 
ment of freely-chosen and desirable ends. The pro- 
cesses which mediate the actual, in short, introduce the 
rule of law and necessity, imposed ab extra by the nature 
of the control invoked ; while the response of immediate 
consciousness, in all the realm of values and ideals, is 
the counter assertion of spontaneity, freedom, and 
the absence of all law save that which embodies a 
necessity intrinsic to the ideal itself.^ 

9. The historical attempts to solve this problem 
have resorted, in most cases, to logical argumentation 
which in the result simply suppressed one of the essen- 
tial terms. The ontological assumptions of rationalism 
and voluntarism alike, proceeding by various devices, 
suppress the necessity attaching to external control. 
The world of science and law is made subordinate to 
that of thought and will; objective is derived from 
moral necessity. Nature, says Hegel, is objective 
mind; nature, says Schopenhauer, is imconscious will. 

On the other hand, to positivists and materialistic 
naturalists, freedom is an illusion, the mind is epi- 
phenomenal, only external necessity is real. 

The more refined attempts to deal with the problem 
distinguish between the phenomenal and the real, 
between degrees of the real, between relative and ab- 
solute, between instrumental and final. Nature is the 
instrument, the tool, of spirit, the stepping-stone to 
freedom. Freedom passes through the discipline of 
law and chance. 

*0n the genesis and nature of these two sorts of necessity, known 
respectively as comptilsion and obligation, see Thought and Things, vol. 
ii., chap. viii. 



The Esthetic Interpretation 263 

10. Here again it would seem to be impossible to 
avoid or to gloss over the opposition between nature 
and freedom, so long as we remain at the standpoint 
from which this contrast perforce arises. The motives 
at work to produce the idea of an external world or 
"nature" are in evidence in certain processes of gen- 
eralisation and abstraction, operating upon contents 
which have been isolated in the mental life; and the 
concept of external necessity is thus drawn from these 
isolated and abstracted classes of data. But in the 
very act of defining the external, the self defines itself 
through other data in which selection, interest, and 
desire embody themselves over against the "other," 
the external. This domain, that of interest, is the realm 
of freedom. So long as these two actualities exist, in 
inevitable contrast, by reason of the motives present in 
mental development, neither of them can suppress or 
ignore the other. ^ Even in the logical mode, when 
reflection has at its disposal the weapons of discursive 
thought, and the opposition between subjective and 
objective is transferred to the realm of inner experience 
itself, the trans-subjective reference remains, involving 
the domain of external necessity, "nature " stubborn and 
defiant. 

1 1 . But conscious process itself goes on to show us 
how the ' ' trick is turned. ' ' The matter of actual organ- 
isation, the content of the objective system of things, 
need not have the attribute of external necessity, but 
may be constituted without it in the domain of the 
inner life. The necessity of whole and parts, of causal 
dependence, of ground and sequence, of means and 
ends — in fact the whole related system of data called 
nature — may remain intact without that sort of external 

' Cf. Thought and Things, vol. iii., Appendix B, sects. 5 flf. 



264 Genetic Interpretation 

anchorage by reason of which it is to be interpreted as 
separate from the mind and foreign to it. Although the 
world is not in its whole being due to representation, 
still its being may include the property of being repre- 
sented. This sort of reconstruction once accomplished, 
as in the semblant and imaginative consciousness, the 
entire system of the objective may then be owned, 
possessed, exploited by the spirit of freedom. 

This in fact is the case in the aesthetic experience. 
The inner life takes over the objective system as a 
whole. It reads its own life of will, feeling, freedom, 
into the object, making it the vehicle of its expression 
and the code of its values ; finding in it not the enemy, 
the opposition, the hindrance it seemed before to be, but 
the appropriate tool of the realisation of its own ideals. 
Through it desire informs itself, will regulates itself, 
impulse organises itself; the world is no longer remote 
but immediate, charged with the values created or 
posited by feeling and thought. The life processes 
forget their quarrels and divorces and go forward in 
the pursuit of the true and the enjoyment of the good, 
both present in the synthesis of the beautiful — all 
because the necessity of the one realm and the freedom 
of the other are made elements in the realisation of a 
complete experience. The larger self of contemplation 
finds the double predicates, united and completed, in 
the one object. 

While necessity thus loses its repugnance to freedom, 
both together becoming the medium of a restrained and 
informed impulse of will, the latter, in turn, the freedom 
of will, loses its character of caprice and irresponsibil- 
ity. The freedom of play and the license of unbridled 
fancy are not the true freedom; nor are they what the 
aesthetic interest allows or guarantees. On the con- 



The Esthetic Interpretation 265 

trary, the true freedom is that of the development of the 
self, to which the content organised by knowledge 
contributes an essential instrument and supplies a 
leading interest. 

Freedom thus comes to stand for the development 
of the self in and through the full exercise of its faculties, 
knowledge being the informing and directing, as will 
is the dynamic and moving factor. The organic whole- 
ness of the life of experience is re-established in each 
pulse of aesthetic realisation. It is a relief from the 
divisions and embarrassments of determinism, on the 
side of nature, and from the caprices and vagaries of 
impulse, on the side of mind. In the comprehensive 
interest of art, the two controls — that of the lawful 
organisation of contents and that of restrained and 
directed activity — show themselves at one. 

12. In this result, the important suggestion of Kant 
would seem to have a certain confirmation, though not 
on the ground given by him: the suggestion stated 
above ^ to the effect that in the aesthetic we have an 
intimation of the unity of the realms of nature and 
freedom. It is not for the formal reason that the 
judgment of taste affirms a priori the harmony of the 
theoretical ideas of reason with the practical postulates 
of morals; for the aesthetic immediacy, while one of 
completion in the sense of realisation of its own ideals, 
is not one of formal absoluteness. It realises its own 
meaning in the most humble and unpretentious concrete 
thing of beauty and taste. Of course, the universal 
of form may be read into the experience, as its implicit 
constitutive principle; but what we actually have is 
an object conveying a more or less tentative and 
partial bit of knowledge, and suggesting certain values 

I Chap, xi., § 4, sects. 17 f. 



266 Genetic Interpretation 

of the nature of utilities or agreeable associations, which 
finds itself taken up and made part of the inner life 
of the self who contemplates it. In this reconsticution, 
the thing of knowledge loses its actual ties of place, 
time, and relation external to it, and also its character 
as the vehicle of the actual realisation of suggested 
utilities and values; and for both of these the self is 
substituted — a self which absorbs the content of know- 
ledge and finds in it the natural and adequate channel 
for the expression of its freedom. 

Neither is Kant's suggestion that here, in the aesthetic, 
we experience the easy adjustment of the formal uni- 
versal to the concrete particular entirely to the point; 
for it is not a question of a reconciliation of this kind, 
but rather one of the curing of a dualism between 
singular and general, both equally concrete and em- 
pirical. ^ To Kant the antithesis is another form of that 
between freedom and nature; for to him the universal 
as form represents the realm of mind. But such an 
antithesis is too formal. The aesthetic reconciliation 
can be considered as formal in the sense that its ideal of 
completed form includes both that of formal truth and 
that of formal goodness; but in any given case it is 
essentially a synthesis of concrete matter, the matter 
of fact of nature and mind being taken over and charged 
with the immediate life of the self. 

§ 4. Msihetic Realisation an Immediacy both of Recon- 
ciliation and of Fulfilment 

13. In what we have just said, it has appeared that 
the immediacy of aesthetic realisation is one that is 
found everywhere in the progress of a mind capable 

' Above, chap, xiii., § 6. 



The Esthetic Interpretation 267 

of the exercise of imaging. It is a constant function of 
imagination to reconstitute the materials of knowledge 
and practice in forms fit to be taken over by the pro- 
cesses of absorption or personalisation which make them 
aesthetic. It is in this sense that the aesthetic im- 
mediacy is one of synthesis and reconciliation; it 
unites at each stage the partial objects of thought and 
will in an objective whole of contemplation. 

But it is also true that, as a function of its own kind, 
it has its continuous development toward an ideal ful- 
filment. The progression of the beautiful proceeds 
pari passu with that of the true and that of the good ; 
there is an aesthetic logic no less than a theoretical and 
a practical logic. The work of art is judged to be more 
or less successful, more or less adequate. Like all other 
constructions of the mind, it may be judged by objective 
and comparative standards. While, therefore, it always 
finds the character of completeness present in its 
object, still this is a completeness which the interest 
itself co-operates in producing. The idealisation of the 
content is an essential motive in aesthetic production; 
but the content, objectively considered, remains only 
what it is. 

It follows that while the work of art is presented as 
complete in itself and satisfying to the interest of aes- 
thetic contemplation, still the aesthetic interest itself 
cannot be arrested permanently upon the one work. 
It goes on to reach further ends of the same kind. 
Each complete in its way, the series of aesthetic pro- 
ducts admit of greater and greater completeness and 
perfection. The last word is never said. Although 
content with one work, the artist at once begins another, 
in which the result is to surpass the first. So the 
aesthetic connoisseur, while finding the ideal in each 



268 Genetic Interpretation 

work of art, still seeks it in new and more complete 
embodiments, with a widening experience and a more 
disciplined taste. 

14. There is here, then, a curious situation, one pe- 
culiar to the logic of this function. There is a sort of 
generalisation of completenesses, of perfections. The 
single work of art is such because it is read as something 
self-contained and autotelic, in its own way perfect; 
but the different cases differ in this very quality of 
perfection. Like other ideals, that of perfection is 
postulated as the end of the entire series of its own, 
cases, while, nevertheless, found actually existing in 
the meaning of each case. 

It may be said that the ethical also presents its ideal, 
that of virtue, as being partially realised in every virtu- 
ous act. This is true, but it does not find in each virtu- 
ous act the moral completeness and perfection which 
would make the one case sufficient for the whole, did 
no other exist. In the aesthetic, such is the character 
of the single work: the mind sees, in the one work of art, 
the ideal as if already realised; the synthesis effected 
is adequate to the motives then in operation. A 
reconciliation of divergent interests is accomplished. In 
the case of the ethical, this is not so; the single virtuous 
act only stirs up the desire, the moral need, for the 
further act and the better will. The moral ideal hovers 
over the agent's aspirations, but constantly eludes his 
grasp. In the esthetic, on the contrary, the agent 
grasps the ideal whenever he has a glimpse of beauty. 
The thing of beauty asserts its complete and unrivalled 
perfection and, by reason of its detachment and of its 
privative mode of negation, denies the reality of every- 
thing but itself. 

15. In aesthetic contemplation, therefore, imme- 



The Esthetic Interpretation 269 

diacy has the meaning of fulfilment or transcendence, 
although, in the motives involved, it is also one of 
reconciliation. The impulse toward a full and complete 
life is fulfilled in that the partial factors of that life are 
reconciled and united. When our life pursues its 
special interests of knowledge and will, we are farthest 
removed from the immediate results of contemplation; 
thought and action are instruments of discovery and 
adjustment; but when the demand is renewed for the 
reconciliation of which these partial interests are capable, 
the ideal re-establishes itself again and again in the act 
of contemplation. While we may enquire as to the end 
of this process of reasserted perfections, the mind itself 
can not ask this question ; for that would be to intimate 
that perfection had not been attained in the single 
object of beauty. 

§5. JEsthetic Intuition a union of Theoretical and 
Practical — and more 

16. In the ideal thus found both realised and also 
renewed, in its own fashion, in the cesthetic progression, 
the rules or norms of the intuitive aesthetic conscious- 
nesses reveal themselves. They are not mere logical 
rules, since the interest is not theoretical; nor are they 
identical with the categorical norms of practice, since 
right conduct is not the aesthetic end. But the syn- 
thesis of these two must be reached, since the aesthetic 
interest finds its content only in the materials originally 
constructed under their operation. 

It is here, however, that the criteria of art show them- 
selves elusive and intangible. As in the ethical realm 
the rule of right, terminating in the single experience 
of good-will, is difficult of formulation, taking on modes 



270 Genetic Interpretation 

that run the risk of formaHty and casuistry, so here 
also. Yet the moral imperative requires, by the very 
conditions of the logic of practice out of which it arises, 
that common consent, synnomic conformity, shall attach 
to its decisions. In the case of the aesthetic, this is the 
more true, since in it the factor of cognitive mediation, 
of truth and objective relation, is so much more in 
evidence. The rules of truthful representation are not 
abrogated in art, nor are those of practical good. 
One may criticise the truth of the work of art, and 
also investigate its morality, both quite legitimately; 
and the artist assists with complaisancy at the criticism 
and investigation. ^ But there must be something more, 
some rule, norm, quality over and beyond these, which 
secures the universal approval of the product as 
beautiful. What then is it? 

17. It can only be one thing, if our analysis is 
correct ; it can be found only in the one aspect in which 
the work of art is something more than an object of 
theoretical and practical interest. It is the embodiment 
of a personal life in the course of its exhibition and 
realisation of itself. In the work of art each man, or 
every sensitive man at least, finds himself at home. 
He is not now concerned with the intellectual interest 
of finding something true; nor with the practical 
interest of finding something good; but with the self- 
realising interest of finding something that absorbs and 
completes the self. After straying in the fields of ex- 
ploration, and struggling in the morasses that lie before 
the palaces of duty, he yields himself to the spell of the 
home, where everything is familiar, where everything is 
wholesome, and above all where everything is his own. 

' On the objective marks and the canons of art, see Thought and 
Things, vol. iii., chap xH. 



The Esthetic Interpretation 271 

§ 6. Esthetic Reason and Absolute Beauty 

18. In view of what precedes, the theory of "aes- 
thetic reason" comes, in our interpretation, to stand be- 
side that of ' ' theoretical reason ' ' and ' ' practical reason. ' ' 
In the former of these two, we recognise those principles 
that seem, in Kantian terms, to constitute the very 
framework and structure, the necessary principles of 
all knowledge. But they arise, as we have seen, when 
the mediating content of ideas, in the ordinary process 
of knowledge, takes on the marks of generality and 
necessity and assumes the character of absoluteness. 
The properties of common validity and rational inter- 
dependence, acquired in the course of experimental and 
social experience, are reflected into the individual judg- 
ment. Here they pose as marks of universal reason. 

Similarly, the norms of social conformity, established 
in actual life, are reflected into the individual conscience. 
At the limit of the mediation of the end by the means, 
the means fall away and the end stands as absolute 
good, imposing its ideal, the categorical imperative of 
the practical reason. It is a synnomic ru^.e of conduct, 
an absolute of value. 

19. In the progress of the life of feeling, something 
analogous takes place. The mediations of thought and 
action assert themselves with their full force here as 
always; but besides their independent development 
toward their respective ideals, they unite in a common 
development in the immediacy of the aesthetic. The 
progress toward this ideal is not, like that of the others, 
a making absolute of one term of a process of mediation ; 
for the two ideals are here fused in a state of immediate 
realisation. Neither means nor ends fall away; but 
each makes its own fitting contribution to the meaning 



272 Genetic Interpretation 

of the real. The content of the aesthetic reason, then — 
understanding by this term the outcome of the affective 
life embodied in aesthetic intuition^ — is not something 
reflected from the world and society into the judgment 
and conscience of the individual, but something reflected 
out of the immediacy of the individual's appreciation 
into the objective and social worlds. While retaining 
the synnomic judgments of truth and the synnomic 
values of duty, it reads its synthetic result, the meaning 
of beauty, into the world of things and men. ^ 

In this reading proper to the aesthetic reason, 
all organised reality — the true, the good, the human, 
the divine — takes on the form of a whole of beauty. 
The aesthetic absolute is born out of the absolutes of 
theory and practice. Beauty is an ejective, rather than 
an objective, mark or quality, as all affective interpreta- 
tions of the objective must be. But it is not, for all 
that, the mere postulation of an ideal. For that 
which is postulated already in the good and already 
confirmed in the true, is now the implicit possession 
of the mind. The self asserts itself in the whole 
experience, and the whole confirms itself in the self. 
The aesthetic reason then is the full reason, the only 
absolute in the sense in which that term has a consistent 
and tenable meaning — a sense to be more fully ex- 
plained in the next chapter. 

' Reason understood in the sense of a psychical immediacy is really 
in every case a state of feeling. It is of the nature of an emotional or 
affective abstract, under which particular theoretical or active processes 
present themselves on occasion, as described in vol. iii of Thought and 
Things, chap. vii. 

* It is in this sense that beauty may be described as " objectivised 
sentiment" (see Gaul tier, The Meaning of Art, Eng. trans.), that is, 
sentiment which is informed and morally distinguished, resulting from 
the union, at whatever stage of culture, of the true and the good, and 
attributed to the beautiful thing. 



PART IV. CONCLUSIONS 



i8 273 



CHAPTER XV 

pancalism: a theory of reality 

§ I. What Reality must mean 

I. It is clearly impossible to detach from any given 
real object the particular coefficient, whether of the ex- 
ternal or of the inner, due to the system of processes 
in which the content has been constructed. The 
distinction between that which is presented in the mind 
in some form, and that reference to a sphere or world or 
class in which it is controlled, anchored, and confirmed 
— that sphere, in short, in which it has some sort of 
existence, over and beyond its mere presence as a 
mental state or image — this distinction confronts us 
everywhere. The entire history of conscious experience 
shows the development of the oppositions, the contrasts, 
the reconciliations of the two great sorts of control or 
existence, inner and outer, mental and external. The 
meaning of reality in the first instance is a meaning 
attaching to an idea, presentation, mental content of 
some sort, by which its place in one of these spheres of 
existence or being is indicated. 

To say of a thing, therefore, that it is real is no more 
nor less than to say that it has one or other of these 
sorts of existence, or that of some combination, modifica- 
tion, or revision of them in view of more refined inter- 

275 



276 Genetic Interpretation 

pretations; it is not to find some new content or idea 
or predicate which has a separate existence.^ Reality- 
is not a thing or content ; it is a mode of subsistence in 
a particular control; it has as many different shades 
of meaning as ttiere are sorts of subsistence and spheres 
of control. 

2. In our interpretation of the various modes of 
reality meaning, therefore, the question is not that of 
isolating one reality as being more real, more solid, 
more valid than others ; for all alike arise in the normal 
process of experience. It is rather a search for that 
meaning of reality which brings together the various 
normal modes of control in the fullest and most com- 
prehensive synthesis. It is not an attempt to explain 
away any of the sorts of reality, but to give to each its 
raison d'etre and proper place in the apprehension of the 
real as a whole. If consciousness has no such synthetic 
function, no way of reconstituting its "reals" in a com- 
prehensive meaning, then so much the worse for it: 
but not for our research; for in that case it is our duty 
simply to report that such is the case. The negative 
conclusion on this point and a pluralistic result would 
be as legitimate an outcome as a positive conclusion 
and a monistic result.^ 

3. We reach an interpretation which finds in the 
aesthetic experience, with all its larger connotation as 
determining the sphere of art and revealing the quality 
of beauty, such a reconstitution of the various reals in 
a synthesis of realisation. To this interpretation we 
have given the name "pancalism. " It is a plain and 
simple proposition, whose grounds have been presented 
in the two chapters immediately preceding. What we 

^ Thought and Things, vol. iii., chap., iv., § 2. 

2 See below chap, xvi., § 3, on the pluralistic alternative. 



Pancalism : a Theory of Reality 277 

are justified in taking the real to be is that with which 
the full and free aesthetic and artistic consciousness 
finds itself satisfied. We realise the real in achieving 
and enjoying the beautiful. 

4. The evident question, however, that comes to 
mind is this: if all the other modes of reality, control, 
or existence reached in the development of conscious- 
ness are to be taken as relative to one another and to 
the movement of experience as a whole, why is not the 
aesthetic mode of realising subject to the same limita- 
tion? By what right does it claim more authority 
than they — than perception, for example, or thought, 
or idealisation in the sphere of practice? If we de- 
scribe all the dualisms, oppositions, contrasts, etc., to 
which the various modes of reaching reality are subject, 
by the term "relativity, " then we may ask of the reality 
reached by aesthetic contemplation, whether it also 
is not relative? — and if not, why not? In this modest 
way, we may approach the question which is the final 
one in speculative philosophy, as it is of our treatment 
of genetic logic, the question of the "absolute." In 
what sense may we call absolute the reality reached in 
aesthetic experience? 

The quest for the absolute in the history of thought, 
so far as it has pursued a consistent course, has been, 
when all is said, the effort to determine a form of reality 
whose being or subsistence does not depend in any way 
upon a principle, or involve a relation, foreign to itself. 
The absolute is not necessarily itself without internal 
structure, movement, or positive character; but it is 
that which is what it is and remains what it is without 
any dependence upon or interference from anything 
else. It is externally, though not internally unrelated; 
internally, though not externally organised. At any 



278 Genetic Interpretation 

rate, to avoid profitless side-issues, ^ let us take the term 
absolute in this sense, and enquire how far the aesthetic, 
rather than any other mode of reality, is in this sense 
absolute. 

, § 2. Sorts of Relativity 

5. We find attaching to the objects of apprehension 
three distinguishable meanings of relativity. There is, 
first, the relativity of the sorts of reality which arise 
together in consciousness by reason of contrasting or 
in some way differentiated process: for example, the 
relativeness of mind and body to each other, at any 
given stage of mental development. Mind is what it is 
only in an experience in which body is what it also is 
then and there; and the reverse. It is the relativity 
of what we have called in a figure the "cross-section" 
of consciousness, the contents at a given stage of de- 
velopment being considered as a whole, as an entire 
organisation proper to that stage. A cross-section of 
consciousness, at the perceptual stage, shows a certain 
meaning of body and a certain meaning of mind; the 
two subsist together in the organisation of contents as 
a whole. The relativity of "parts in an organised 
whole " is here in question. 

' It may be said, in reference to this position, that it is not taken 
unadvisedly. If one should characterise the absolute in any one of a 
half-dozen special ways — as the unknowable, the undefinable, the 
uncaused, the completely rational — one finds in each case that one is 
taking up a partial point of view, logical, ethical, perceptual, which 
makes the absolute relative from the point of view of the whole of 
experience. For example, either will or thought can be considered 
absolute only by the inclusion in itself of the other, while in concrete 
experience they are strictly correlative to each other. Carried on to the 
absolute, to the point at which it absorbs and erases will, thought is no 
longer thought; and in absorbing thought, under the same supposed 
conditions, will is no longer will. 



Pancalism : a Theory of Reality 279 

6. Second, there is the relativity attaching to an 
objective content considered as being itself in course of 
development or as having had an earlier stage and as 
passing on to a later stage. The progression of the self, 
that of the external object, that of the logical term, each 
shows a series of stages established normally in the 
development of the content looked upon as the same. 
What I am to-day in my thought of myself is relative to 
what I was yesterday and to what I am to be to-morrow ; 
the same holds of my thought of you, another personal 
being. Each of these is not only relative to the "other, " 
at one and the same stage, but relative to itself at some 
other stage. This we have called, pursuing the same 
figure further, the "longitudinal view" of consciousness, 
in contrast with the cross-section view; it supposes 
an observer looking at the movement of a mind re- 
trospectively and prospectively or in a figure "length- 
wise.' ' We have to do here with a ' ' genetic ' ' relativity ; 
as so defined, it is a matter of development. 

7. Again, third, we note a further and more subtle 
sort of relativity arising from the fact of affirmation 
itself. This has appeared in the discussions of negation 
in its several modes. ^ The act of acceptance is corre- 
lated with that of rejection, and seems to admit, if it 
does not require, a form of existence as attaching to that 
which is rejected. So also logical affirmation seems, 
in certain cases, to lead in the act of denial to the 
recognition of a sphere of the erroneous; in it is found 
all that which is negatively related to that which is 
affirmed. Leaving over the more precise statement for 
discussion below, we may raise the question of a 
relativity as between positive and negative mean- 

' Thought and Things, vol. i., chap. ix. ; vol. ii., chap. viii. ; and above 
chap, xii., § 5. 



28o Genetic Interpretation 

ing or, to characterise it briefly, a "relativity of 
acceptance." 

8. Another, the fourth, form of relativity that 
occurs to us — one that has been a stumbling-block in 
the pathway of philosophy — is that which attaches to 
the object considered as being in relation to mind, as 
being literally an "object" of apprehension or ex- 
perience, as well as a thing. If reality as such is known, 
is it not then relative to the self that knows it? This 
is, in our research, a very central topic, for it is as 
objects or thoughts primarily, that reality is investi- 
gated in genetic logic. The phrase "thought and 
things" suggests this final relativity, which may pro- 
perly be called the " epistemological " relativity proper. 

Having thus described the senses in which conscious 
objects generally are relative, let us ask to what degree 
the aesthetic object escapes one or all of these senses, 
and so wins the right to be called absolute. 

§ J . The Esthetic content a non-relative Whole 

9. As to the first of the senses in which the descrip- 
tive term "relative" may be used of a mental object or 
content — that which signalises the contrast, opposition, 
or other relation of parts or factors in an organised whole 
— the situation is clear. In so far as it is true that the 
aesthetic experience is one of the synthesis of contrasted 
or opposing terms, just to that extent the relativity 
attaching to these terms or factors would disappear in 
the establishment of the whole in which the terms are 
united. The relativity of self and not-self, that of 
actual and ideal factors of meaning, that of singular 
and universal — real as these relativities are with 
respect to the opposing terms as such — do not attach 



Pancalism: a Theory of Reality 281 

to the entire experience in which the terms unite in 
a construction or meaning inclusive of them all. 

10. The question arises still, however, as to the 
complete isolation and self-sufficiency of the cesthetic 
object. Is it unrelated as respects other contents and 
independent of them? 

In proceeding to answer this question we have to 
take the point of view of the inner meaning or intent 
of the experience, the intrinsic claim of the in- 
terest involved. Of course we can point out the 
actual conditions under which the cesthetic object 
takes form; the psychical antecedents, the active 
motives, that condition its appearance. But this is 
not to interpret the experience itself, its own intent of 
reality. When we enquire into that, the mode of reality 
of the cesthetic object, the work of art itself, we find it 
literally a whole, a detached and isolated construction. 
While it endiires, the partial motives, practical, play- 
ful, etc., are for the time in abeyance, awaiting, as it 
were, the dissolution of the bond which unites all 
their results in the larger artistic whole. In fact, it 
has been pointed out by certain investigators that 
in many cases, notably that of the interest of watch- 
ing a drama, there is a certain vibration of the mind 
between the ordinary and prosaic system of actuali- 
ties and the dramatic situation depicted on the 
stage. The mind's eye, open in turn to each of the 
two spheres of actual and semblant, prosaic and 
ideal, enhances the value of the latter by allowing 
itself from time to time to lapse into the former. And 
after the play is over, after the intense concentra- 
tion of the mind on the depicted situation, there is a 
violent return, a reaction amounting sometimes to a 
shock, to the partial interests and concerns of every-day 



282 Genetic Interpretation 

life. To the outside observer, who sees the relations of 
dependence, cause and effect, etc., this seems to denote 
a relativity as between the two spheres; but, from the 
point of view of the aesthetic itself, the accomplished 
synthesis of art, it is simply the return from the ideal 
completeness of a fully organised aesthetic whole to 
the sphere of relativeness, opposition, incompleteness. 

That this is the true interpretation is seen in the 
fact that one can not bring two works of art or two 
aesthetic situations into any sort of antagonism or 
comparison inter se. If truly artistic, each produces 
its own special effect ; it is appreciated for itself regard- 
less of the other. The two may hold consciousness in 
turn and they may be variously judged, each for itself; 
but they cannot be weighed synchronously as two 
different but related artistic units. ^ The attempt 
to do this gives the jumble of motives found in certain 
complex styles — the rococo, the plateresque, certain 
Gothic motives — which breaks up the aesthetic unity 
into related parts and sacrifices the value of the whole. 

II. So far then as this sort of relativity is concerned 
— that of the terms or units of meaning to each other, 
in virtue of which one is said to be relative to the other — 
the aesthetic object is not relative. It admits no 

^ I may say of two landscapes, for example, that one is more pleas- 
ing to me than the other, or is more "to my taste. " But this is either to 
estimate my own feeling or to judge the actual contents of the landscapes. 
It is not to say that the two esthetic effects interfere with, limit, or 
otherwise sustain relations to each other. In passing from one to the 
other, we feel the need of a readjustment, a reconcentration, by which 
one of them is completely removed, as a whole, from the mind, before 
the other is taken up. They cannot become simply related terms in a 
larger whole, without losing their character as independent works of 
art. So in pronouncing one portrait "better" than another, we pass 
upon the portrayal, a matter of accuracy or success of representation. 
But the poorer portrait may be the superior work of art, both judgments 
being in themselves un£esthetic. 



Pancalism : a Theory of Reality 283 

"other"; it is all-engrossing in its essential interest 
and self-sustaining in its objective compass. If this 
is one of the conditions of absoluteness, the assthetic 
object is in this respect absolute; it means to be an 
unrelated and autonomous whole. 

§ 4. The Esthetic, a non-relative Mode 

12. If what has been said is true of the cross- 
section of consciousness, it is none the less a fact that, 
in things aesthetic no less than things truthful and 
things good, consciousness passes through successive 
stages of development ; and this is not only true to the 
outside observer, but it is part of the very identity 
of the state with itself. The interest shifts, changes, 
rises higher, sinks lower, becomes concentrated or thin. 
There is a functional process, giving results constantly 
differing among themselves — in short, a progressive 
movement, a development of the assthetic mode of 
apprehension. 

Now, it may be asked, is not each stage or point of 
this advance relative to the stages before and after it? — 
and is not this true even for the internal meaning 
itself? From this "longitudinal" point of view, a 
relativity of genesis or development seems to be 
present. Does the aesthetic experience in fact escape 
this? 

13. Reserving for the moment the point of view 
of the outside observer — it comes up below in the dis- 
cussion of the relativity of subject and object — we may 
say of the objective aesthetic meaning or content that 
for the mind itself, the observer's own mind, there is 
no such progressive development. Each object aesthe- 
tically realised — each genuine work of art — is a unity 



284 Genetic Interpretation 

which is discontinuous with every other; it has no 
"before or after" in the movement of consciousness. 
This is not to say, of course, that the objective content, 
the situation or event depicted, does not vary; it 
does vary indefinitely. But in all the variations in the 
content selected to fulfil the aesthetic interest, the end 
or proper intent of the interest is always the same.^ 
When I say "that is beautiful," or "this is sublime," 
or "that is in good taste," I express the sort of satis- 
faction that comes from attaining one and the same 
fundamental end of interest in different ways ; that is, 
the end of contemplating something intrinsic, some- 
thing having a full reality, to which the different 
partial interests of knowledge and practice contri- 
bute, each in its own way. As aesthetic meaning, the 
content of my contemplation has one and the same 
value, although as a thing or as a good it varies 
indefinitely. 

This is implied in all that has been established as to 
the intrinsic character of the aesthetic mode of interest.^ 
It has no remote end; its end is just to find, realise, 
fully grasp the whole meaning of the object that is 
present to it. The interest of knowledge is to extend 
its object, to enlarge the range of truth; and under this 
impulse, the interest leaps here and there, prospecting 
for facts, proposing hypotheses, and seeking informa- 
tion. So too the practical interest pursues utilities, 
moralities, practical adjustments beyond the situations 
presented to it and which it uses as means. But unlike 
these, the aesthetic interest is not continually in pursuit 

' The interest as function varies in freshness, facility, etc., and its 
effectiveness varies with training and use, temperament, and informa- 
tion; but in all these conditions, the end pursued is constant. 

^ Cf. Thought and Things, vol. iii., chap. x. 



Pancalism : a Theory of Reality 285 

of the changing and progressive. On the contrary, it 
is, in each case, fully satisfied with what it gets. It 
dies when its object vanishes. It comes again, born 
de novo, when the new work of art excites it. In each 
case it is a self-sufficient meaning, and in all cases the 
same meaning : just the added intent which the varying 
objective constructions need to be found beautiful, 
besides being found true or good or both. 

Such adequacy, lack of relativity, inherent complete- 
ness and independence of the "before and after," is 
postulated in the case of knowledge and practice, but 
only as an ideal; only at their final culmination in a 
state of intuition. In intuition, as we have seen, certain 
terms of the process of mediation — the end in one case, 
the means in the other — are taken as absolute, in just 
this sense. They become unconditional, independent, 
unhypothetical, self-evidencing; matters of immediate 
and unconditional acceptance. In the case of the 
esthetic, this is true not only at the limit, at the ideal 
consummation, but everywhere and always. It is 
always intuition; the ideal is always fulfilled. It has 
the same right to be called absolute, so far as this 
point is concerned — that it allows of no genetic pro- 
gression, no before-and-after in its meaning — as 
rational principles and practical imperatives in the 
theories in which these are the accepted absolutes. 

We should remember, however, to be fair to ourselves, 
that this is the meaning for consciousness itself, for the 
point of view of the psychical. The question of genetic 
relativity, as it appears to the observer who notes the 
progressive changes both in the aesthetic sense and in 
the aesthetic ideal, with the progress of knowledge 
and social organisation, is to be taken account of 
below. 



286 Genetic Interpretation 

§5. The Esthetic, a non-relative Acceptance 

14. Another of the senses in which relativity attaches 
to objective constructions of consciousness is that, 
mentioned third above, in which acceptance in whatever 
form implies a corresponding rejection, affirmation a 
corresponding denial. In detailed studies of the nega- 
tive, the various forms in which this relativity appears 
have been pointed out. Of these, certain general 
types exhaust the matter for our present purposes. 

In the first place, there is the rejection, together with 
the acceptance, of the active life; the exclusion of that 
which is unwelcome, undesired, repugnant, over against 
the welcome given to that which fulfils the opposite 
conditions. In what sense does this appear in the 
aesthetic realm? Are there exclusions as well as 
inclusions, of this positive sort, in the interest which 
determines the object of beauty or art? 

We have seen, in examining the aesthetic negative,* 
that something of this sort appears in the determination 
of the ugly. The ugly is not merely that which is 
neglected, or not selected, by the aesthetic interest for its 
contemplation, but that which is positively avoided as 
repellent and inhibitive to that interest. While, there- 
fore, as has appeared above, no assertion of a negative 
or opposed sphere of existence is implied by the aesthetic 
state itself, still we do find, in the ugly, a determination 
in connection with the eesthetic interest, in a direction 
which seems to accept the fact or actuality of the object 
to which the marks of ugliness are attributed. In 
the result, then, is not the positively aesthetic, the, 
beautiful, in a sense relative to the negatively aesthetic, 

' Thought and Things, vol. iii., chap, x., § 5. See also above, chap, 
xiii., § 5. 



Pancalism : a Theory of Reality 287 

the ugly? Does not the aesthetic interest recognise the 
one as well as the other? 

15. Upon full reflection, we found that the answer 
to this question must be negative: the ugly is not es- 
tablished by the aesthetic interest, nor constructed in a 
form due to it ; on the contrary, it is established in op- 
position to this interest and in inhibition of it. We 
have found in the coefficient of the ugly two factors. 
The ugly is that which resists one or other or both of 
the motives of the aesthetic interest operative in the 
semblant imagination, i.e., idealisation and personali- 
sation. The negative aesthetic or ugly would therefore 
be more properly described as the positively uncesthetiCy 
in contrast with the merely non-aesthetic or indifferent. 

If this is true, it follows that the form of existence or 
reality attaching to the ugly is always that of a fact, 
truth, or worth arising in the operation of some other 
function and already determined by it. The elements, 
for example, of a waste-heap, which offend the senses 
of sight and smell, and resist the reading of the whole 
as an esthetic object, are apprehended by perceptive 
and affective processes. They are defined antecedently 
to the rise of the interest which would find the object 
beautiful. The sort of reality attaching to the heap 
is, for aesthetic contemplation, one of a partial and 
incomplete form of existence. From the point of view 
of the cesthetic interest and its negative aspects of 
negation and privation, the object has no existence at 
all as an aesthetic whole ; though it may have, as all other 
objects have, certain existence values of fact and worth, 
as long as the aesthetic interest is in abeyance. 

16. It is interesting to compare this case with the 
analogous cases of the logically false and the morally 
bad. The logically false is that which is denied by the 



288 Genetic Interpretation 

judgment; it is the failure of an attempted assertion.* 
The morally bad or evil, on the other hand, is that which 
fails to fulfil, or which positively offends, the ideal set 
up by the moral will. 

In the case of the logically false, the proposition that 
does not win assent fails thereby to get reality in the 
logical sphere; fails, that is, to be taken up into the 
system of truths. Logically then it is unreal. But 
that does not prevent the elements — perceptual, con- 
ceptual, affective, or other — from still being existent 
and in so far real, in the spheres in which they are 
separately determined. "Cows are bipeds" is not 
true; there is no such reality as two-footed cows; but 
both cows and bipeds still exist in the realms, taken 
separately, in which these classes have arisen. The 
conclusion is that here, as in the case of the aesthetic, 
the realm in which the denial goes forth does not admit, 
in its mode of reality, certain objects which, in simpler 
and genetically earlier modes of function, were con- 
stituted as real. This means that in the succeeding and 
more synthetic mode, that of the true or that of the 
beautiful, as the case may be, something is demanded 
over and above the qualifications which establish 
reality in the preceding and simpler modes. 

17. Similarly, there are certain cases of the morally 
bad, which represent that which does not fulfil, or that 
which positively resists, the ethical ideal: acts and dis- 
positions which can not be taken up and constituted in 
the sphere of moral reality, but which resist the attri- 
bution of moral predicates. ^ This may be true, although 

^ Cf. Thought and Things, vol. ii., chap, viii., §§ 4 f. and chap, xiii., 

§3. 

^ Such are uninformed, impulsive, unreflective acts, in contrast with 
acts of deliberately wrong intention, which represent a bad will in a 
positive sense. These latter constitute the true sphere of moral evil. 



Pancalism : a Theory of Reality 289 

we can not say that these bad acts and dispositions are 
within the ethical sphere. They show simply that 
some things which have reality in other spheres are not 
available for the constitution of the morally good. 
They are real enough from the point of view of fact, 
physical, mental, and social; they resist and limit the 
progress of the moral ideal: but in refusing to accept 
them, or in positively condemning them, the moral 
sense does not give them recognition in the organisation 
of the positive reality which the moral ideal postulates. 
In short, the ethical reality consists in a positive organ- 
isation of wills and values. As we have seen it issues 
from a specific mode of interest and practice. That 
which is not taken up in this organisation is left in the 
sphere in which its reality is otherwise established; 
it is real in the mode proper to it. We may condemn an 
act or an attitude of will as being inconsistent with our 
moral ideal; but, in admitting its reality, we may be 
taking the point of view not of the ethical, but of the 
factual; not of moral reality, but of mere existence.^ 
In these cases, the morally bad is analogous to the 
ffisthetically ugly. Each represents the unfitness of 
certain materials offered to it for its peculiar mode of 
construction; but neither asserts the negative reality 
of these materials within its own system of organ- 
isation. 

18. But now an essential difference appears, which 
makes the aesthetic peculiar, and rids it of its last 
vestige of relativity in this regard. Unlike logical 
denial and moral rejection, an aesthetic assertion, when 

^ Yet immoral acts as such and immoral persons certainly exist. A 
bad will is that of a person who knowingly acts in a way to violate his 
own feeling of the good. Unlike the cases mentioned, these acts and 
persons do enter into the moral sphere. 
19 



290 Genetic Interpretation 

once established, isolates its content entirely from 
entangling alliances, both positive and negative. Its 
positive assertion renders its content privative, not 
merely exclusive. It blots out everything except just 
what it holds in its embrace. 

This neither the logical nor the moral can do, for 
reasons inherent in their nature. The logical denies the 
attribution of a predicate drawn from one sphere or 
class to a subject belonging to another, while however 
recognising both as legitimate within the entire logical 
world of discourse. Both cows and bipeds are real 
within the system which the logical interest seeks to 
extend. It can sometimes be said that these logical 
classes are irrelevant, or in logical opposition, to 
one^another, never that the assertion of something about 
one deprives the other of all right to exist. To define 
cows as quadrupeds does not destroy the bipeds. And 
the same is true of the ethical. The assertion of the 
goodness of an act is in so far the assertion of the rela- 
tive badness, or unfitness at least, of the contrary act; 
but it never implies the obliteration of the latter from 
the world of real predication, from the domain of values 
in which moral predicates find their application. 

19. In other terms, logical denial and positive moral 
rejection are cases of exclusion arising from the estab- 
lishment of rival or inconsistent classes, one cognitive, 
the other affective; while aesthetic determination, 
even that of the ugly, does not involve exclusion. On 
the contrary, when present at all, it establishes a single 
and unique class, the very establishment of which effects 
a synthesis that abolishes all other classes as such. As 
our detailed discussions have shown, aesthetic assertion 
alone is purely and entirely privative.^ 

* See Thought and Things vol. iii., " Interest and Art, " chap. x. 



Pancalism : a Theory of Reality 291 

This being true we may confidently conclude that the 
sort of relativity attaching to assertion with negation, 
and to acceptance with rejection, does not attach to 
esthetic appreciation. It is then in this sense also 
absolute. 

§ 6. The Esthetic non-relative as respects the Relation, 
of Knower and Known 

20. The last form of relativity pointed out above 
as attaching to constructions which have the meaning 
of reality, is that which arises from the relation of the 
thing known to the person or process that knows it. 
There is in all knowledge the relation of knower and 
known ; for the knower is in all cases present when any 
sort of object is apprehended. This relativity, there- 
fore, seems to lie behind all the others. 

While this is the case, and while this truth has become 
the assumption of modern speculative thought, it is 
still true that the ideal of knowledge — an ideal which 
imposes itself with ever greater clarity and force with 
the progress of science — implies an objective system of 
truths and facts which are what they are apart alto- 
gether from knowledge. The assertion of the ontological 
point of view is in so far common to the metaphysician 
and the "positive" scientist: reality simply is; it is 
what it is in its own inherent right and nature; it is 
not that which is known or that which owes anything 
of its existence or being to knowledge. 

2 1 . This becomes then the great antinomy of know- 
ledge, this reference to something foreign to itself — • 
a reference which, if taken seriously, would cut off 
the process of knowledge from any participation in 
the reality of its own objects. Setting up external 



292 Genetic Interpretation 

things as appearing in his knowledge, the knower 
nevertheless declares that they are entirely independent 
of his knowledge. 

In our earlier discussion,^ we adopted the knower's 
point of view in opposition to that of the metaphysician ; 
the psychical, that is, in opposition to the ontological; 
we now have to ask the question as to just what this 
point of view implies in the interpretation of objective 
reality. 

22. What has just been called the antinomy of 
knowledge, in its objective reference, takes on two 
forms. In the first place, there is the intent of the 
object to be independent of the individual process in 
which it is made up or constructed. The individual 
knower finds it part of the meaning of the thing that it 
should be foreign to his perception or knowledge; it 
has to him a control that is in its meaning foreign and 
independent of him. This we may call, in so far as it 
implies the denial of any relation between the thing as 
such and the merely individual knower, the "extra- 
psychic reference." This reference, so understood, 
extends to the perception or apprehension of other 
persons by the individual; they too are external or 
foreign to the person who apprehends them. 

23. The other case is that in which this implication 
of foreignness or independence extends itself to all 
knowers or perceivers alike, so that the thing or object 
becomes completely isolated from all conscious pro- 
cesses. The extra-psychic reference is taken to hold 
for all; it is synnomic. An ontological thing or truth 
exists, physical, spiritual, or whatever its kind, separate 
from the processes of individual and common appre- 
hension alike. This reference also holds for the re- 

* Above, chap, xii., § 2. 



Pancalism : a Theory of Reality 293 

lation of minds inter se. As being thus independent of 
all psychical process, its objects are said to have the 
"trans-subjective reference. " ^ 

We have, therefore, these two distinguishable ele- 
ments in the entire implication whereby knowledge 
discovers things apart from itself: the "extra-psychic" 
and the "trans-subjective." 

The question of interpretation then arises, as to 
which term of the antinomy established by knowledge — 
the terms of which are the relativity of the object to 
the individual knower and the independence of the 
object from the knower — is to be accepted as finally 
characterising reality. Is the real, in its ultimate 
form, to be considered as an element in personal expe- 
rience, or is it to be considered as existing per se apart 
from experience? So stated, the question concerns 
primarily the validity of the extra-psychic reference; 
but it is usually assumed that with this goes also the 
validity of the trans-subjective reference. If the ob- 
ject is really independent of any one observer, it is said, 
it must be independent of all. 

24. We have already seen why it is that knowledge 
can not solve this antinomy of its own making. In 
the first place, every attempt it makes to interpret the 
object as independent of itself, gives a result for which 
knowledge is still more or less responsible, to which 
in fact knowledge has contributed something. And the 
question arises at each stage of cognition as to how 
knowledge can effectively cut itself off from its own 
products. But more positively, there is a further reason 
in view of which knowledge must hold to the relativity 
of its objects to experience. In becoming reflective or 

^ The use of the terms extra-psychic and trans-subjective, as employed 
here, is suggested in Thought and Things, vol. i., chap, i., sect. lo. 



294 Genetic Interpretation 

interpretative of its own contents, the process of know- 
ledge re-erects them in the form of ideas, systems of 
data, truths, thus placing them within the theatre 
of subjective process. The extra-psychic reference 
becomes a process of conscious mediation. Whatever 
result its interpretation may reach, all the oppositions 
and dualisms by which it recognises the foreignness 
and independence of its objects are established 
nevertheless under the presupposition of the subjective 
processes of judgment and reflection. This "secondary 
presupposition" of the psychical, as we have elsewhere 
called it,* remains to haunt the house of every onto- 
logical theory of reality. In this form, the relativity 
of subject and object remains to the last for apprehen- 
sion of the cognitive type. 

In the matter of the trans-subjective reference, the 
antinomy is all the more embarrassing, since the syn- 
nomic force of judgment and reflection gives increased 
stability and isolation to the external object, while itself 
arising very evidently in certain stages of conscious 
process. One person's illusion may be corrected by an 
appeal to the perception of others; even hallucination 
may be discounted in view of the synnomic results of 
reflection. In this way one of the two externalising 
references, the extra-psychic, may be antagonised or 
neutralised by the other. And the reverse is also true. 
A judgment citing the common belief of all may be 
refuted by the private experience of one. So the subjec- 
tive origin and character of both these references to the 
external is abundantly shown within experience itself. 

25. In the case of realities of value, the same antin- 
omy presents itself, but with greater emphasis on the 
side of relativity, on account of the extreme ambiguity 

' Thought and Things, vol. ii., chap, xv., § 4. 



Pancalism : a Theory of Reality 295 

of objective values and the hesitation of the worth 
consciousness in giving them extra-psychic meaning. 
In many cases, it is true, the value is attributed to the 
object as something inherent in it, or at least independ- 
ent of the individual's choice and preference — the 
economic value of the diamond is independent of any 
one person's appreciation of it — but even in these cases 
the value seems to retain its over-individual or social 
dependence upon processes of psychical appreciation 
and selection. The trans-subjective reference is not 
in force. And in less objective cases, such as the values 
of immediate contemplation, direct enjoyment, and 
ideal satisfaction, the factor of subjective and individual 
choice is so prominent that no means of conversion of 
the meaning into objective form is found. 

We may safely say, then, that while the reality of 
value has in some cases the extra-psychic intent, it 
does not generally have this; and that probably in no 
case does a worth-meaning have that trans-subjective 
reference which would place the reality of value apart 
from individual and social experience of the objects to 
which the value is assigned. It is, in fact, part of the 
presupposition of the objective and independent reality 
of things and truths that thej;' no longer contain elements 
of selective determination. They are stripped of their 
value, which retains its reference to experience. 

26. Our conclusion then is that realities of both sorts 
remain relative to conscious process, cognitive and 
conative, in spite of the reference or implication 
attaching to them as having foreign and independent 
existence. The presupposition of conscious process 
hangs about them; and the facts of inter-subjective 
intercourse give them relations to the social no less 
than to individual experience. 



296 Genetic Interpretation 

27. In view of this conclusion, the question comes 
up as to the presence of these conditions of relativity 
in the aesthetic consciousness, when objects of either 
sort, things or values, are made matter of art produc- 
tion or appreciation. 

In answering this question, a broad survey of the 
characters of the aesthetic consciousness again gives 
us light. It is quite impossible to hold that, in the 
aesthetic content, the general distinction between 
persons and things, mental processes and objective 
existences, is lost. The situations of art are often such 
as to sharpen this contrast — the tragedies of fate, 
necessity, law, and the pathetic conquests or defeats of 
personal love, pity, passion. In art in general the 
special individual motives are often in strongest con- 
trast to what is general, necessary, mechanical, or 
dead. The content is recast in the form of imaginative 
semblance, as we have seen; but there is nothing in 
this recasting to destroy the distinction, made by 
conscious process, between the private self and its 
object. If we are to hold, as seems just, that the results 
of knowledge and practice alike are retained in their 
full force in the entire aesthetic meaning, then the 
distinction between them, which persists in that entire 
meaning, can not be denied or minimised. The aes- 
thetic then, we may say, does not abrogate the extra- 
psychic reference of knowledge. The individual does 
not lose his sense of personality, as over against the 
assthetic content. It is clear that, in any case of admira- 
tion of a work of art, one does not actually confuse 
oneself with it, or the elements of personality portrayed 
in it with those of other works of art. 

It is, therefore, not the individual mental life as such 
that is charged into the object — and of which so much is 



Pancalism : a Theory of Reality 297 

made in recent analyses of the beautiful^ — that is, it is 
not elements which remain individual and ungeneralised. 
So far as it is the individual mental life, it is, as our 
earlier analysis indicated, that body of dispositional 
interests and habits of the individual which allow of 
generalisation and ejection, and so stand for other 
minds as well, or for experience in general. 

28. But it may be asked, if this is true does not the 
antinomy remain in the aesthetic, as in the other modes 
of consciousness, as between the independence and the 
dependence of the object as respects the knower? If 
the esthetic recognises and asserts the extra-psychic 
reference, in much the same sense as other functions of 
apprehension — even though, at the same time, it takes 
the whole object up into the personal life — is there 
not here a contradiction in the implications of art? 

So far as the extra-psychic reference proper is con- 
cerned — that which implies the object's independence 
of the individual's experience — this would seem to be 
true. But the antinomy is resolved when we come to 
consider the trans-subjective reference — that which 
would separate the object from all experience as such. 
Here we see the importance of the distinction, hereto- 
fore largely overlooked, between these two sorts of 
objective reference. 

We have found that the aesthetic, like the theoretical 
and the practical in their reflective forms, has a syn- 
nomic force. The work of art is appreciated as having 
the same meaning and value for all competent ob- 
servers. Now in so far as the individual reads a mental 
life into the thing of beauty, he speaks not for himself 
alone, but for the community, for all men; for the 
sesthetic consciousness in general, not for his private 

^ See above, chap, xiii., § 3. 



298 Genetic Interpretation 

taste and judgment alone. True It does express his 
private taste; but that is not its whole meaning. He 
feels that he is the organ of the larger circle, of the 
universal taste which works in him. The mental 
life which his sympathetic feeling reads into the object 
becomes a representative mental life. Its assertion of 
worth issues from a typical tribunal of judgment, not 
from a private bureau of opinion. 

While therefore the aesthetic consciousness recognises 
the separateness of the object from experience, taken 
in the individual sense of the extra-psychic reference, it 
does not recognise its separateness from all experience, 
in the sense of the trans-subjective reference. This latter 
is abrogated by the movement of personalisation or 
Einfiihlung. The object is given the motive of a 
typical mental process, although constituted in the 
mind of the individual, who proceeds to identify himself 
with it. The synnomic force of the true and the syn- 
nomic value of the good are preserved in the semblant 
reconstruction itself, giving to its mental life, to its 
"self," the corresponding meaning of a synnomic con- 
scious function. The object of art does not tolerate 
any strictly private motives or purposes ; it is detached 
from the individual self, at the same time that it em- 
bodies what is common and essential to the life of all. 

29. The truth of this position is illustrated by the 
different ways our personal sympathies are attributed 
in art. Our sympathies go out to living characters 
rather than to dead things, to the person rather than to 
the animal;^ and when it is a question of rival claims 

' One recalls the story of the child who, on seeing a picture of the 
Christian martyrs being devoured by lions in the Roman arena, cried 
out, "Oh, Mama, there's a poor lion that has no Christian!" The incon- 
gruity that makes this amusing is just the child's misplaced sympathy. 



Pancalism : a Theory of Reality 299 

and motives, it goes to the higher and more ideal rather 
than to the lower and less worthy. It is the general and 
universally human, the ideal self, that is typified in the 
process of personalisation, the individual self identify- 
ing himself with this, and holding others to the same 
identification. 

30. We reach then the important conclusion that, as 
regards the relativity of knower and known, the ces- 
thetic experience, taken as a whole, escapes it. It 
abrogates the trans-subjective reference which would 
make of the real something separate from experience 
altogether; for it interprets the aesthetic object as 
embodying a movement of psychical determination. It 
gives the work of art the mission to incorporate the 
movement of mind in its universal and synnomic form. 
But, on the other hand, it reasserts the relativity of 
the individual processes which reinstate, within the 
aesthetic whole, the concrete situations involving knower 
and known. The knower knows the known, and knows 
it as being something apart from his knowledge. This 
antinomy is reasserted in the aesthetic consciousness 
within the organisation of the content; hut the entire con- 
tent, carrying within it this antinomy, is not itself subject 
to it. 

The work of art is, therefore, not relative to 
any other mode of reality. The aesthetic experi- 
ence knows no "other" to its own object, no non- 
experiential or non-esthetic reality. The relation of 
subject and object is part of its content; but it is 
not itself subject to this distinction. In this sense 
again its object is absolute. It is a reality allowing 
no other outside it, although inside it there is all the 
complex organisation that experience of self and the 
world involves. 



300 Genetic Interpretation 

§ 7. The Knower and his Experience: Pancalism 

31. From these explanations, we may see in what 
sense the reality given in assthetic contemplation can 
be called absolute. If the absolute is the non-relative, 
then the aesthetic reality is absolute in all the senses 
discussed. It remains, before pointing out certain 
philosophical corollaries, in the last chapter, to draw the 
conclusion which is justified as to the point of view from 
which reality is most adequately apprehended: our 
answer to the question of genetic morphology. 

It appears clear that, by the fusing and transcending 
of the various modes of existence, subsistence, presup- 
position, postulation, etc. represented in the relativities 
now fully discussed — the inner and the outer, the earlier 
and the later, the actual and the ideal, the true and the 
false, the affirmative and the negative, the good and the 
bad — in transcending all these contrasts, the assthetic 
consciousness denies finality to each of them as being 
in an exclusive sense the point of view for the interpre- 
tation of the real. If the system of logical truths, for 
example, is a partial and incomplete reflection of 
reality, being relative to the system of teleological 
values which escape its rendering, then any logical 
character, such as "identity in difference," con- 
sistency, organisation in a whole of implication, can 
not be accepted as sole criterion of the real. They are 
criteria certainly of the mode of reality secured by 
cognitive and logical processes as such; but when the 
point of view of logical apprehension or thought gives 
place to that attained in the larger synthesis of the 
esthetic, the inadequacy of such criteria to evidence 
the nature of the whole of reality becomes evident. 

32. So too with the mode of reality represented in 



Pancalism : a Theory of Reality 301 

purposive meaning, moral and teleological, as embody- 
ing the principles of will, intention, ideality. Its results 
and ideals are relative, being in contrast with those 
of thought, and subject with it to the larger synthesis 
foimd in the aesthetic. Hence will and its conservation 
— its "identity and continuity"^ — would seem to be in- 
adequate expressions of the real. Interpreted teleologi- 
cally, reality is in its very nature relative to reality 
interpreted theoretically or mechanically. To read 
into the movement of reality as such a principle ex- 
clusively teleological or purposive in character, is to 
abandon the point of view of synthetic realising for 
that of the ontological postulation of value. 

33. So with each of the partial points of view from 
which reality may be interpreted: all are relative save 
that in which relativity and incompleteness are lost 
in a higher immediacy and completeness. This is, 
as we have now seen, the point of view of assthetic 
experience. It is the knower's point of view, as we 
have described it, when that point of view attains 
"absolute" validity; when, that is, it stands for the 
mode of apprehension that is free from embarrassment 
due to rival and dualistic motives. In it experience 
reaches its competent r61e, as reflecting, in a full and 
absolute presence, that which the several knowers, 
willers, and feelers of its own private and social history 
have only partially discerned. 

So understood, the knower's point of view is not 
subjective, for it is no longer individual nor in con- 
trast with the objective. It is not private, for its 
utterance is that of a synnomic or universal experience. 
It is neither realist nor idealist, in the traditional mean- 
ing of that distinction ; since its reality, while in experi- 

^ Cj. Urban, Valuation, etc., pp. 401 f. 



302 Genetic Interpretation 

ence, is not in contrast with anything out of experience : 
experience is all-comprehensive of reality^ It is a 
point of view sui generis; and to describe it fully would 
be simply to write out again the description and 
implications of aesthetic experience. We summarise 
it all when we speak of the art-experience or of the 
enjoyment of beauty; but who of us could say just 
what is realised in the enjoyment of a work of art, or 
just why he enjoys it? 

34. We have thus filled in the outline of an inter- 
pretation or theory, which finds in aesthetic contem- 
plation the organ of the apprehension of the real in its 
complete, synthetic, and in certain intelligible senses, 
absolute form. To this theory we have in advance given 
the name " pancalism." ^ There are, no doubt, other 
ways of reaching a result which would in some similar 
manner utilise the aesthetic category ; and the resulting 
theories might also bear this name. Indeed, in our 
historical exposition, we have described as " pancalistic " 
certain views in which this goal has been approached 
by other paths. 

It remains to suggest, in the final chapter, certain 
philosophical corollaries. They are implications of 
pancalism; conclusions warranted by the results of 
genetic logic, although not within its scope in so strict 
a sense as the foregoing. 

' Thought and Things, vol. iii., Preface and chap, xv., § 7. See also 
the Preface to this work. 



CHAPTER XVI 

COROLLARIES 

§ I. The Nature of Reality 

1. Having now stated the theory of pancalism, as 
being the interpretation of reality to which our detailed 
investigations lead, we may point out briefly certain 
implications or corollaries having a more general philo- 
sophical bearing.^ The broad question, what then is 
the nature of reality? — is upon the reader's lips. 

The conclusions we have reached allow us to suppose 
that reality is just all the contents of consciousness so 
far as organised or capable of organisation in aesthetic 
or artistic form. The individual consciousness is then 
the organ of reality. The whole of reality would be 
the entire experience of a consciousness capable of 
grasping and contemplating it as an aesthetic whole. 

The whole is an organised experience, and this expe- 
rience has the form of a self. If we ask for further 
descriptive determinations of reality, we fall at once 
into one or other of those partial points of view from 
which we lose the vision of the whole, and reach the 
apprehension only of some special mode of existence 
or reality — actual, ideal, good, true, or other. 

2. As to these special modes of reality, they are not 

^The reader may turn to Thought and Things, vol. iii., chap. xv. 
(especially §§ 7, 8), where certain of these implications have already 
been suggested. 

303 



304 Genetic Interpretation 

to be considered invalid or unreal; since each contri- 
butes, in its own way, to the essential content of the 
assthetic organisation. The aesthetic reveals some- 
thing new, something peculiar; but it accepts and 
reinstates, in its own way, the realities and even the 
contrasts of the partial modes. The true remains the 
true; the good, the good; the reals of ideality and 
actuality remain, contributing the imperative force of 
right and the synnomic intent of truth. All bring 
their contributions to the whole. Each is therefore 
a valid though, genetically considered, a modal and 
incomplete aspect of the real. The progress of reality 
is a real progress, the constant achievement of new 
modes and phases, each having its characteristic 
aesthetic synthesis, and the whole presenting an ever- 
widening and enriched contemplation, as the sciences, 
the systems of practical utility — economic, political, 
ethical — and the arts of convention and convenience, 
work out their distinctive contents. Science retains 
its entire validity, as the theory and instrument of truth ; 
ethics and the normative disciplines remain entirely 
free to filfil their task; the sesthetic itself has both its 
scientific and its normative problems, in which patient 
investigation and searching analysis are needed. All 
contribute to the general travail and progress of human 
effort, and all unite to enrich the aesthetic apprehension 
of the real. The movement of tradition proceeds, the 
store of intellectual and moral wealth increases, crowned 
at every stage by the synthesis of art, which renders it, 
in the full sense, the embodiment of reality. 

3. If we take the point of view of the whole, at any 
stage, reality becomes absolute in the senses indicated. 
It is not relative to any other whole ; and it synthesizes 
all the relativities of its own parts. The organisation 



Corollaries 305 

of contents persists in it; the truths, goods, values of all 
kinds surviving in the artistic whole of the beautiful. 
But this does not mean that no further statement, no 
later achievement, of reality is possible; for the whole 
is continually and progressively moving on, with the 
advance of the motives of its several factors. It is 
just the quality of the sesthetic ideal to reach finality 
in every statement of its results ; but to say that reality 
is itself finished, in this intent of finality, is to deny the 
continued efficacy of the motives themselves upon which 
this very intent is based — the motives of continued recon- 
ciliation of active and theoretical impulses and interests. 

4. But the question still persists — does a conscious- 
ness of the whole, apprehended as a larger aesthetic 
experience, exist? The answer is clear, since by the 
whole we must mean that which synthesizes the various 
existence-meanings. Certainly the consciousness of it 
exists so far as it exists, and in the same sense. Both 
things and values exist by the processes of knowledge 
and valuation which together, in a single movement of 
synthesis, constitute the experience of the beautiful. 
The meaning of existence, like all other meanings 
in experience, undergoes characteristic modifications. 
'The judgment of existence is not the instrument of 
aesthetic realisation; rather, this realisation is an 
immediate awareness of the content and of the self 
embodied in the content. An (Esthetic whole of reality 
could not be constituted save in a conscious experience. 

We have no right, as we have seen, to accept the 
ontological conception of existence or reality; the 
conception of it as being something cut off entirely from 
experience. By existence we mean that which is 
reached as the outcome of knowledge, or as the ideal of 
goodness, or as the confirmed presumption, assumption, 



3o6 Genetic Interpretation 

or judgment — all modes of conscious handling of data 
of experience. What is the physical world but what 
the whole of our physical knowledge finds it to mean — 
that which our physical experience, broadly understood, 
leads us to presuppose and accept? So in other realms 
of existence. This being true, we may say that the 
experience which presides over and guarantees the 
partial factors of existence, unifying them all, estab- 
lishes itself by their organisation in a whole which makes 
of the world a work of art. 

On this point, the postulates of intellectualism and 
voluntarism are correct, if they are looked upon as 
methodological assumptions. But neither is capable of 
superseding the other. Each properly justifies itself 
on the ground of empirical process of a certain type. 
But in order to justify its exclusiveness, in denying 
equal validity to other types of theory, it deserts 
experience, going over to an absolute of thought or will 
which is metempirical. This is to cut off the limb upon 
which it sits, one limb of the entire tree of experience. 

5. Philosophical discussion of these positions would, 
of course, be too extended for our space ; thej^ are stated 
as corollaries of the point of view which our research 
has justified. To go farther would be to write too long an 
appendix to the proper topic of the work. So much is 
legitimate, however, to the problem of real logic, 
designated as that of the morphology of the real. 
Answers may be inferred from our main conclusion to 
many other philosophical problems — answers justified 
so far as the main conclusion is justified.^ 

' It is in place to emphasise the interpretation given to the movement 
of experience as a whole, as embodied in the theory of "genetic modes" 
(see the work Development and Evolution, chap. xix). See also the dis- 
cussion of the rival mechanical and teleological theories in Appendix 
B. to vol. iii. of Thought and Things. 



Corollaries 307 

§ 2. The only Alternative — Pluralism 

6. It is in order now to ask what our investiga- 
tion teaches us in case the synthesis thus suggested 
is not finally made out. What then becomes the 
philosophical alternative? 

Clearly, there is but one alternative : the field is left 
clear to a radical pluralism of a realistic and a-logical 
type. Even a pluralistic spiritualism or personalism 
would not be justified, since a synthesis based on per- 
sonality requires the recognition not only of other 
persons than the one, but also that of things. Per- 
sonality has both the extra-psychic and the trans- 
subjective reference. There is in experience no mode 
of process, save the aesthetic, in which these two 
references are divorced, that is, in which what is taken 
to be foreign to individual experience is not also taken 
to be foreign to collective or synnomic experience. 
The only sort of a plurality of personalities which would 
not carry with it a world of things external to all 
experience, is that which may be constituted within 
an aesthetic whole. 

7. One may, however, ask: why not simply accept 
a pluralism of realities — physical, mental, moral, artistic, 
etc. — without any further determination common to 
them all? Our reply is twofold. 

(i) Because to do so would be to take out of 
experience its objective results, while ignoring the 
experience itself in which these results arise and have a 
common significance. These different or plural prin- 
ciples of reality are apprehended in the course of 
development of a systematic organised mental life; 
to read them as separate and unrelated to each other 
and to this mental life would be to deny even the sort 



3o8 Genetic Interpretation 

of kinship among them that their common presence in 
experience establishes. An original or absolute plural- 
ism would contradict even the presupposition of 
knowledge, upon which the concrete character of each 
of these realities directly depends. 

8. (2) In accepting a pluralism of a radical sort, 
which takes realities as it finds them — different, 
disparate, incoherent among themselves — we must in 
fairness take them all, denying no one of the modes of 
the real reached in the normal attitudes of acceptance. 
Among these will certainly be the reality of the beauti- 
ful, of art. But in the acceptance of this, as being what 
analysis shows it to be, we revise our independent 
acceptance of all the others. If the world is to be 
artistic, beautiful, it can not be incoherent, disorganised, 
radically pluralistic. 

Any pluralistic theory, therefore, that would have 
a chance of commending itself to reflection, would 
perforce be a relative pluralism, one of the sort that 
allows at least the comprehension of the diversity of 
so-called realities in a larger unity of some sort, such 
as the unity of experience, or the unity of law. This 
being granted, the first step is taken toward the con- 
clusion that the required unity is that of art. 

§j. Pancalism, a Constructive Affectivism 

9. It remains, finally, to characterise our result from 
the historical point of view. We have seen that the 
interpretations of reality, since the introduction of the 
subjective point of view into modem philosophy, have 
vibrated between various rationalisms and various 
voluntarisms, apart from tendencies of a "positive" 
character, which have recognised certain limitations of 



Corollaries 309 

method and so have denied the possibility of a philo^ 
sophy of reality. In speculative thought systems of 
rationalism and voluntarism have contested the field. 

A third point of view, making appeal to feeling, has 
persisted, however, more or less desultorily, its presen- 
tation growing more and more articulate. Its clear 
formulation is to-day most urgently needed. We have 
sketched its historical development above under the 
heading of aff ectivism. ^ 

The result we have ourselves now reached may be 
called an affectivism; since it denies the competency 
of either reason or will to serve as exclusive organ of 
reality, and asserts that an immediate synthesis of 
functions is found in aesthetic contemplation, a state 
which may be described as one of feeling. Let us see, 
therefore, what relation this theory holds to those earlier 
sorts of affectivism, more or less constructive, to which 
our attention has already been given. 

10. In the first place, considered as a theory based 
upon immediacy, it satisfies and utilises the demand 
for direct affective realisation seen in early emotional 
and religious mysticism. The aesthetic experience is, 
to the uninitiated, a sort of ecstasy or trance; it has 
been likened by many to the hypnotic state. The 
cessation of the motives alike of urgent action and of 
intense curiosity tends to bring on the calmness and 
disinterestedness found in simple mystic contemplation. 

This side of the experience also gives room for those 
more definite contributions made to affective theory by 
early reflective mysticism. In Plotinus, the divine 
presence and process is not one manifesting itself by 
causal or logical processes, but one merely presenting 
itself as a series of actualities, events, data immediately 

* Above, chap. xi. 



310 Genetic Interpretation 

present to contemplation. This is true also when the 
state is one of immediate artistic presence, supervening 
upon those of rational and practical mediation. 

It is in the same movement, further advanced, but 
satisfying the same demand, that the theories of intuition 
and faith came into modern philosophy. They rest 
upon an immediacy considered as embodying what is 
final and transcendent, something given to conscious- 
ness without discursive process, and revealing the 
ultimate nature of the real. In these views, the direct- 
ness and actuality of mysticism are taken over and 
attributed to pure reason, intuition, and faith. In our 
view, this demand is satisfied in eesthetic contemplation. 

II. Again we find in Aristotle, Kant, and Schell- 
ing — together with other writers who are more or 
less explicit — positions in which the aesthetic, or at 
least a type of feeling, is made the organ of synthesis 
in which the mystical sorts of contemplation mentioned 
began to find reflective justification. In many in- 
stances, indeed, the resort to mystical and affective 
states of mind was motived by interests, if not 
explicitly, yet really, aesthetic in character.^ The 
aesthetic has often become the resource, when specula- 
tions based upon the motives of partial mental pro- 
cesses w^ere at a dead-lock or had exhausted themselves. 

But as mystical contemplation and its later descend- 
ants, the various postulates of intuition and faith, did 
not have the informing and synthetic elements neces- 
sary to theory, so the pancalisms of reflective thought 
have not gone far, owing to their purely speculative and 
logical character. The determination of the intellec- 

' This has been brought out in the study of W. D. Furry, The 
/Esthetic Consciousness, etc. (Baltimore, 1908), to which allusion has 
already been made. See the Preface, above. 



Corollaries 311 

tual factor necessary to bring feeling into its true role as 
an instrument of epistemology, has been lacking. Feel- 
in.g has been left at the level of impulse or passion, or 
carried over into the empty form of transcendent 
reason. 

What has been needed is the theory of imagination, 
considered as a function partaking of the nature of 
cognition and capable of informing the affective interest, 
while free also to embody it.^ And it is not feeling 
alone, but will also, that is to be brought into the syn- 
thesis of intuition. The imagination must also be the 
instrument of the ideals of the will. This began to be 
prepared for in the doctrine of the imagination of Aris- 
totle and the Italian mystics, reappeared in the theories 
of art of the Renaissance, and was developed in the 
doctrines of the schema and of art of Kant. 

12. To this constructive development of affectivism 
our detailed working out of the nature of the schematic 
imagination, in its assumptive and semblant role, ^ may 
be found to contribute something. The imagination 
is the instrument of the prospecting, idealising, evalu- 
ating, assuming, activities of the mind. It is operative 
in the sphere of affective no less than in that of cogni- 
tive contents and interests ; in knowledge, volition, and 
feeling, no less than in the artistic as such. The newer 
analyses of the esthetic, however, show that in it the 
imagination finds its synthetic and perfect role. Its 
operation in the realisation of the beautiful is not special 
and relatively unessential, as is usually supposed. In 
art, the things of knowledge and will, taken up by the 
imagination, fuse in the immediacy of the values of 

' As it has been put above, besides the "freeing of thought," there is 
the "freeing from thought." 

' Thought and Things, vols, i and ii. 



312 Genetic Interpretation 

feeling; and the two great currents of affectivism, 
the mystical and the rational, fall together. Whatever 
may be thought in the result of this attempt to show 
this, and whatever right we may have to call the result- 
ing synthesis of contemplation aesthetic in this or that 
accepted sense, still we are persuaded that the materials 
are present here for a reconciliation of the opposing 
claims of rationalism and voluntarism, and for a con- 
structive reading of the essential demands of the mys- 
tical and intuitive modes of apprehension.^ 

In this sense Pancalism is a constructive affec- 
tivism. It shows the way by which feeling may be 
informed, not remaining blind, but seeing all things 
sub specie pulchritudi7iis . In this Latin phrase, now 
explained in detail, the mxOtto of our larger work, 
TO xaXbv xav, is more fully rendered. 



' Professor Urban terminates his valuable treatise on Valuation, 
already-cited, with the following words: "The implications of valuation 
. . . lead to the claim of priority. Yet since . . . there is always the 
further implication of an inner truth, since life and experience show 
themselves . . . more and more capable of statement as a system of 
truth, there always remains the assumption of the ultimate intel- 
ligibility of every value. A still higher form of experience, in which 
the two claims are equally satisfied, a form of contemplation which 
transcends will and thought alike, must ever be the goal ... of 
all metaphysics. Such a state . . . would indeed be the Beatific 
Vision." 



GLOSSARY OF TERMS 

Together with their Definitions, as Employed in Genetic Logic; Ac- 
companied by Illustrations and Instances.^ 

Absolute: not Relative (q. v.). Sustaining no determining relations 

with anything else. 
Acceptance: the attitude of mind which admits something, either as 

being without question or as putting an end to question. 

Cases: Presumption (q. v. ): Presupposition (q. v.): Acknowledg- 
ment (q. V.) : Affirmation (q. v.). 
Acknowledgment: the attitude of acceptance accorded to a logical 

proposition. 

Example: I acknowledge the truth that "Lincoln was a patriot." 
Actual: (i), existing as a fact or confirmed truth; hence (2), the object 

of knowledge or of direct apprehension, as contrasted with the 

postulates and ideals of feeling and will. 

Cases: (i) Actual Commonness: the force of being actually held by 

different minds in common. (2) Actuality theories: those which 

restrict reality to the facts or truths established by knowledge. 
Affirmation: a logical Acknowledgment (q. v. ) put in verbal form as an 

assertion. 

Example: the assertion, "Lincoln was a patriot." 
Agenetic: not Genetic (q. v.) : not involving real growth or change. 

Illustration: mechanical action, such as the action and reaction of 

billiard balls. 
Aggregate: having the Commonness (q. v.) of being entertained by 

different minds, apart from their consciousness of agreement: 

common meaning held in common. 

' The reader may compare the definitions, due to different writers, given in the 
author's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology. Some of the terms given here, 
however, have been proposed since that work was issued and will not be found there. 
The Vocabulaire philosophique of Lalande, prepared for the French Philosophical 
Society and appearing in their Bulletin, has reached the letter P; it is of high autho- 
rity. Discussions in which some or all of these terms or their equivalents are used, 
are: A. Meinong, Uber Annahmen (2 ed.), and Gegenstandstheorie und Psychologic; 
W. M. Urban, Valuation, its Nature and Laws; Furry, The Esthetic Experience; 
Baldwin, Thought and Things. See the several Indexes to these works. 



314 Genetic Interpretation 

Example: common opinion, individually reached. Synonym: 
Catholic. 

Appropriate: fitted to a certain end or use. 

Case: appropriate Commonness (q. v.): that sort of common 
force which renders a judgment fit for general acceptance. C/. 
Synnomic. 

Assertion: the statement of a logical Acknowledgment (q. v.), either 
affirmative or negative. 

Illustration : in a formal debate, one party makes assertion of the 
affirmative, the other of the negative, of the question proposed. 

Assumption: (i), the attitude of assuming something, that is, of treat- 
ing it as if real or true; (2), that which is thus assumed. 
Cases: Suggestion, Proposal, Hypothesis, Postulation, Semblance: 
see these terms. 

Autonomic: self-controlled, self -directed ; subject to no authority or law 
foreign to itself. 

Example: the aesthetic interest, as accepting no external interfer- 
ence or control. 

Autotelic: having no end or purpose beyond or outside itself; not 
Heterotelic (q. v.) or Instrumental (q. v.). 
Examples: "play for play sake," "art for art sake." 

Coefficient: the mark or character which differentiates one mental object 
from all others. 
Examples: "memory coefficient," "coefficient of externality." 

Common: in some way involving entertainment by more than one mind. 
Cf. Commonness, and Community. 
Illustration : public opinion is common. 

Commonness: the property of being Common (q. v.). 

Cases: Community (q. v.) of thoughts. Conformity (q. v.) of 
wills. 

Community: (i) the property attaching to judgments and propositions 
(a), of being accepted by different persons in common ("community 
by whom"), and (b), of holding good for all persons in common 
whether accepted by them or not ("community for whom"); (2), 
the commonness of the acceptance (a) accorded to and (b) due to 
judgments and propositions. 

Examples: (i), the force or import of a proposition as being (a) 
Aggregate (q. v.), and (b) Synnomic (q, v.); (2), any agreement in 
belief, whether (a) Actual (q. v.) or (b) Appropriate (q. v.). 

Con-aggregate: pertaining to that which is held in common as being 
common; that is, pertaining to an Aggregate (q. v.) of Syndoxic 
(q. V.) meanings or knowledges. 

Illustration : your and my common understanding of public opinion 
is con-aggregate. 



Glossary of Terms 315 

Conformity: the commonness of consent or active acceptance (a) 
actually exercised toward and (b) Appropriate (q.v.) in view of a 
law, precept, or injunction. Cf. (a), Syntelic; (b), Synnomic. 
Examples: the consent of various wills (a) as actually given and 
(b) as required by the moral law. 

Content: that part of an entire Meaning (q. v. sense i) which is Recogni- 
tive (q.v.). 

Example: the diamond ring as a recognised object (content), apart 
from its value, its use for adornment, etc (Intent, q. v.). 

Contrast-meaning: one of the terms of a contrast, which, together with 
the contrasted term, makes a whole single Meaning (q. v.) 
Example: inner (-outer). 

Control: the limiting, directing, regulative (as over against the constitu- 
tive) factor in the determination of anything. 
Illustrations : the determination of a physical object has the external 
control afforded by sensations of resistance; that of ends, goods, 
objects of desire, has the inner control of appetite, interest, etc. 

Conversion: (i) the process of turning a mental object or state into 
another which it represents or stands for; (2) the resulting testing 
and confirmation of the former. 

Cases: my memory image of a house is converted into a percept 
when I revisit the actual house (primary conversion); it is con- 
verted into your memory or perception when I accept your report 
to confirm or revise my own (secondary or social conversion) ; it is 
converted into judgmental or other psychical terms when I reflect 
upon, criticise, or otherwise assimilate it to the body of my experi- 
ence (tertiary or psychical conversion). 

Datum : that which is given without co-operation or process on the part 
of the mind. 

Example: a mental object considered as stripped of all Meaning 
(q. v., sense 2). 

Denial: logical rejection; the assertion of the falsity of a proposition. 
Illustration: I deny that " the part may be greater than the 
whole." 

Determination: the formation of something, mental or physical, by all 
the factors which enter into it. 

Examples: the (mental) plan of this book as conceived; or the book 
as a (physical) result. 

Dualism: a distinction between two contrasted classes, interpreted as 
two sorts of existence or reality. Cf. Contrast-meaning. 
Examples: the dualisms of "mind and body," "self and not-self," 
"subjective and objective." 

Eject (and Ejective) : another person's mind apprehended in terms of 
one's own. 



3i6 Genetic Interpretation 

Illustrations: the deity, considered anthropomorphically, has been 
called the "world-eject"; I attribute my motives ejectively to you. 

Elucidation: (i), the social expression, as between speaker and hearer, 
of the Implications (q. v.) of a proposition; (2), all logical matter 
or truth considered as implying the relation of speaker and hearer. 
Example : the logical development of a theme considered as having 
the force of an oral discourse. 

End: that which is set up in the mind as object of desire or of pursuit 
through this or that Means (q. v.). 
Example: riches pursued by means of trade. 

External: outside the individual's conscious process, or taken by him 
to be so. Cf. Extra-psychic and Trans-subjective. 
Example: the table I write on. Synonym: Outer. 

Extra-psychic: apart from or foreign to the individual's processes of 
apprehension. Cf. Trans-subjective. 

Example: the reference of knowledge to its object as existing apart 
from the knower. 

Fugitive: pertaining to disconnected, passing, "free" states of mind. 
Instances: images of revery, casual fancies. 

Genetic; showing real growth or change. 

Examples: genetic Series (q. v.), genetic Progression (q. v.). 

Heterotelic: having an end or purpose beyond or outside itself; not 
Autotelic (q. v.). Cf. Means, and Instrumental. 
Instance: book-keeping as furthering the ends of business. 

Immediate: present to consciousness without Mediation (q. v.). 
Cases: see Immediacy. 

Immediacy: the condition of being Immediate (q. v.). 

Cases: (i), primitive immediacy: that of supposed simple sensation 
or pure feeling; (2), transcendent immediacy: that in which pro- 
cesses of mediation are fulfilled or completed. Cf. Intuition; 
(3), synthetic immediacy: that in which the motives of different 
mediations are synthesized and reconciled, as in sesthetic contempla- 
tion, considered as uniting the true and the good. 

Implication: an additional item or items following logically from that 
which is already accepted or assumed. 

Illustration: the falsity of the negative is an implication of the 
truth of a universal affirmative proposition. 

Individuation: the mental process of finding or treating something as a 
single thing. 

Illustrations: the tree, perceived as a whole, including its leaves, 
and the single leaf, taken as a separate thing, are in turn individu- 
ated. 

Inner: pertaining or belonging to the individual's consciousness. 
Instances: inner process, inner control, etc. 



Glossary of Terms 317 

Instrumental: serving as Means (q. v.) or instrument to something 
else. 

Instance: knowledge used for practical ends (in the theory of 
Instrumentalism, all knowledge is instrumental in this sense). 

Intent: that part of an entire Meaning (q. v.) which is Selective (q. v.) 
over and above that part which is Recognitive (q. v.). 
Illustration: a diamond ring has the intent of personal adornment 
besides its Content (q. v.) as a recognitive object. 

Inter-subjective: subsisting between individual minds. 
Instance: social intercourse. 

Intuition: (i), the content of immediate apprehension; (2), the content 
of the higher Immediacy (q. v. case 2) of fulfilled or completed 
process. 

Meaning: (i), any mental object with all its signification; (2), the 
signification (only) which attaches to a mental object, content, or 
datum (see these terms). C/. Intent. 

Examples, as in the phrases: (sense i) "that idol is my meaning 
— what / mean," and (sense 2) "the idol means God — what it 
means." 

Means: that which serves as instrument, tool, or medium to something 
else. Cf. Mediation. 

Examples: money, the means of trade; bribery, the political means; 
"the End (q. v.) justifies the means." 

Mediation : the relation by which one mental content (object, idea, etc.) 
serves as medium or means to the presence or determination of 
another. Cf. Conversion. 

Cases: the memory-image of a house mediates the perception of the 
actual house (cognitive mediation) ; the plan to take a walk mediates 
the excursion (active or practical mediation); the "middle term" 
of a syllogism mediates the conclusion (logical mediation, also 
cognitive in character) ; the intention to commit murder mediates 
the making of the bomb which in turn mediates the actual murder 
(voluntary mediation, also practical in character). 

Mode: Any phase of existence, considered as being sui generis. 

Cases: in psychology, the (psychic) modes of self -consciousness, 
volition, thought; in objective science, the modes of vitality or life, 
consciousness or mind, community or social intercourse; in genetic 
theory, the (genetic) modes or stages of a genetic Progression 
(q.v.). . . , . 

Negation: rejection embodied in a judgment of denial. 
Cases: all negative propositions. 

Object (mental) : whatever the mind can or does apprehend, attend to, 
or think about. 
Illustrations: in saying "I see the dog" and "I am thinking of 



3i8 Genetic Interpretation 

nothing," I make "dog" and "nothing" equally my mental 
object. 

Ontological: pertaining to reality considered as independent of or as 
owing nothing to our apprehension ; that is, as existing per se. 
Illustration: the "ontological point of view " assumes or posits such 
a reality. 

Outer: see External, 

Pancalism: the theory according to which the aesthetic mode of being 
real, apprehended in the contemplation of the beautiful, is all- 
comprehensive and absolute. 

Illustration: in the contemplation and full enjoyment of an object 
as beautiful, what we realize includes all the aspects under which 
the object may be found really existent and of real value ; as such, 
it is unrelated (not Relative, q. v.) to anything outside of itself. 

Postulate: that which is postulated. See Postulation. 

Postulation: the suggestion of something for acceptance, made without 
adequate grounds in fact or convincing logical proof. 
Illustration: the existence of the moral ideal may be postulated. 

Presumption (of reality): (i), the primitive and uncritical attitude of 
acceptance; (2), that which is so accepted. 

Examples: the savage's credulity, the child's acceptance of the 
reality of persons and things. Synonym: Reality-feeling. 

Presupposition: the admitted but unstated ground upon which some- 
thing rests. 

Illustration: the statement "the sun will rise to-morrow" has the 
presupposition of the continued existence of the solar system. 

Practical: having reference to practice, utility, or value. 

Examples: the practical interest and the practical life as contrasted 
with the theoretical. 

Pragmatelic: tending to or seeking practical ends. 

Examples: the motives of gain, pleasure, utility, in contrast with 
those of knowledge. 

Pragmatic: pertaining to that which is practical in its relatively remote 
and objective consequences. 

Example: knowledge considered as leading to or issuing in practical 
results. Hence the theory which gives such an account of know- 
ledge is called Pragmatism. 

Private : peculiar to or possessed by one individual only. 
Examples: dreams, immediate states of feeling. 

Privation (and Privative) : the Rejection (q. v.) of all that is not in- 
cluded in a selective Determination (q. v.). 

Cases: privative or exclusive interest: the child's rejection of all 
dolls but "Biddy"; privative negation: a judgment embodying 
privation, such as, "nothing is worth while but friendship." 



Glossary of Terms 319 

Progression: a genetic movement or process involving a series of 
stages or terms called genetic modes, which are qualitatively sui 
generis. Cf. Mode. 
Examples: the progression of self-consciousness, that of feeling. 

Project (and Projective) : a mental object at a stage of apprehension 
earlier than that at which the dualism of inner and outer is reached. 
Illustration: both physical objects and persons, as present to the 
infant's apprehension. 

Proposal: a statement suggested verbally to some one for his accept- 
ance. 

Example: any logical content or truth considered as suggested to a 
hearer by a speaker. 

Psychic (-al) : belonging to the one person's immediate conscious process. 
Cf. Psychological. 

Illustration: the psychic "point of view" is that of one's simple 
awareness of his own psychical or mental events. 

Psychological: belonging to the mind as made object of observation. 
Cf. Psychic. 

Cases: (i), the observation or interpretation of one mind by another; 
(2), reflection upon one's own mental processes as if they were 
those of another; both represent the "psychological point of 
view." 

Psychonomic: pertaining to influences, forces, and conditions which 
limit, hem in, interfere with, or otherwise serve to Control (q. v.) 
the mental. 
Instance: brain processes considered in relation to the mind. 

Public : having the commonness of being recognised by different minds 
as current or social. Cf. Social meaning, under Social. 
Instances. Public opinion: that which is recognised by the in- 
dividual as the common thought of the group. Public meaning 
{e.g., the self): that thought (e.g., of the self) which is common to 
all, and of which all recognise the common or social character. 

Reality-feeling: the primitive undisturbed sense of reality. Cf. Pre- 
sumption. 

Recognitive: (i), subject to recognition; hence, (2), belonging to the 
cognitive rather than to the conative or affective functions. Cf. 
Meaning, sense (i). 

Examples: of (i), a memory image subject to recognition; of (2), 
a statement of fact as embodying knowledge. 

Rejection: (i), the refusal to accept a thing as satisfying or true; (2), 
opposition, actively put forth. 

Examples: of (i), refusal to call the unsesthetic beautiful (cf. Priva- 
tion), or the false, true (cf. Denial) ; of (2), opposition to the morally 
bad. 



320 Genetic Interpretation 

Relative: sustaining relations with something else, and in some degree 

or manner determined by these relations. Cj . Absolute. 
Schema: a determination of mental content^ by the imagination, as a 

Proposal (q. v.) or Suggestion (q. v.) 

Examples: "make-believe, " Semblant (q. v.) objects generally, 

as set up by the imagination. 
Schematize: to set up as Schema (q. v.) of the imagination. 

Examples; to suggest something playfully, or as an artistic combina- 
tion, or as a proposed logical relation. 
Selective: (i), due to or determined by processes of preference, interest, 

choice; hence (2), belonging to the affective and active rather than 

to the cognitive functions. Cj. Meaning. 

Illustrations: (i), anything desired is a selective meaning; (2), 

interest is a selective function. 
Semblance: the character by reason of which an object is Semblant 

(q.v.). _ 

Illustration: play has the semblance of reality. 
Semblant: set up consciously in the imagination as if real. 

Examples: the "as-if " situations of play and art. 
Situation: any more or less complex set of conditions. 

Instances. Social situation: a given body of social relationships; 

Self- thought situation: the social relationships implicated in the 

individual's thought of self. 
Social: pertaining, referring, or belonging to two or more minds which 

sustain relations to one another. 

Instances. Social intercourse: typified by the "speaker and 

hearer" relation; Social meaning: common knowledge, in the sense 

of Syndoxic (q. v.), recognised by all as common property; Social 

situation: the body of relationships subsisting in a group. 
Socius: (i), the individual's thought of self as involving others; (2), the 

single self or person considered as involving others in the conditions 

of his thought. 

Illustration : the impossibility of having strictly private thought 

reveals the socius. 
Suggestion : anything present in mind, having the character of a pro- 
posal or proposition presented for acceptance, action, or belief. 

Example: the suggestion that America existed made by Columbus 

to Catherine. 
Syndoxic: having the Commonness (q. v.) of being entertained by the 

thinker as common to himself and others. 

Examples: conventions, opinions, customs, recognised by the 

individual as common to himself and others. 
Synnomic: having the Commonness (q. v.) of binding force upon all, 

in the mind of each. Cj. Appropriate. 



Glossary of Terms 321 

Examples: truths and duties, held by one person to be equally true 
and binding for all. 

Syntelic: having the commonness attaching to ends or purposes 
entertained in common by different minds. 
Illustration: the common intention of different men to get rich. 

Teleological : (i) pertaining to that which is intentional, volitional, 
end-seeking; hence (2), pertaining to that which develops by some 
inner impulse or motive, as if it were end-seeking. 
Illustrations: (i), teleological process: such as the development 
of an interest; teleological meaning: such as an end held in view, 
or a system of such ends; (2), vital processes — in appearance 
tending to an end. 

Theoretical: having reference to knowledge, truth, or science. 

Examples: the theoretical interest and life, in contrast with the 
Practical (q. v.). 

Trans-subjective: apart from or foreign to all mental processes of ap- 
prehension, both individual and social. Cf. Extra-psychic, and 
Ontological. 

Example: the reference of knowledge to its object, as being isolated 
from all apprehension. 

Trial-and-Error: (i), the procedure called try-try-again; (2), the same 
controlled for scientific purposes. 

Illustrations: (i) the child's procedure in learning to walk; (2), the 
scientific man's method of eliminating rival hypotheses by experi- 
ment. 

Will-to-believe: readiness to accept one alternative in preference 
to others, in the absence of logical proof or strong rational pre- 
sumption. 

Illustration: the preference for theism as against atheism, or the 
reverse, neither being considered proved. 



APPENDIX A.^ 

In order to recall to the reader the place of Genetic 
Morphology in the general scheme of topics covered by- 
Genetic Logic, the following outline of headings originally 
proposed, in the first volume of the work Thought and 
Things — all of which will have been treated with the issue 
of the present volume — may be reproduced here, as follows: 

Genetic Logic. 

A. Functional Logic (as in Vol. i. of Thought and 

Things.) 

B. Experimental Logic (as in Vol. ii. of the same work.) 

C. Real Logic: i. Genetic Epistemology (as in Vol. 

iii. of the same work.) 
ii. Genetic Morphology (as in the 
present text.) 
In the division given in Vol. i., Chap, i., § 6 of the work 
cited. Experimental Logic is made a subordinate heading 
under Functional Logic, instead of being given an independ- 
ent place, as is done here. 

APPENDIX B. 

As intimated above (Chap, xi., sect. 24) Professor Or- 
mond assigns to esthetic experience an epistemological r61e. 
(A. T. Ormond, The Foundations of Knowledge, pp. 227 
ff.^) He finds that the category of unity has its origin in 
aesthetic intuition; and concludes that judgment as such, 
being a unifying function, is always aesthetic. An aesthetic 

^ C/. above, chap, i., § 4. 

^^See also the allusion to Professor Ormond in the Preface. 

323 



324 Appendix B 

value attaches to all the products of judgment, in science 
and morals no less than in art. In this way, the aesthetic 
is made a matter of feeling in general, which responds 
to objective unity. Judgment is a function of feeling, in 
somewhat the sense of the Kantian Urtheilskraft. 

While recognising the great interest of this suggestion 
as to the category of unity, the view that the judgment 
is always aesthetic seems to overlook two important 
distinctions. 

In the first place, to say that unity as such is aesthetic, 
even in judgments of fact and utility, is to deny the distinc- 
tion between such judgments, on the one hand, and those 
of beauty, on the other; or to make it necessary to seek the 
criterion of beauty in some further character of the objective 
content. We can say that all unity is pleasing, without going 
on to say that it is in all circumstances beautiful. On the 
contrary, it is beautiful — when it is so — because it embodies 
an ideal, in which a more detached content and a larger 
synthesis are suggested. To be beautiful, the property of 
unity must itself become part of the content; it must be 
gazed upon objectively. Otherwise, it may remain merely 
a character of the pleasing object — or of a displeasing one — 
which is not judged to be beautiful. The waste heap, to 
cite one of the examples of our text, may have its objective 
unity, but remain for all that offensive and hideous. 

This leads to a second point. The judgment as function 
does not itself unify a content of experience; it merely 
acknowledges a unity already suggested or proposed. 
Judgment affirms or denies the synthesis in which the unifica- 
tion is presented in the form of assumption, hypothesis, or 
schema of the imagination. It is in the imagination that 
the unity is engendered, the ideal set up. The judgment, 
by accepting or rejecting it, produces a certain duaHty 
rather than unity — the duality between subject and pre- 
dicate and also that between the object judged and the self 
that judges. For judgment always establishes the relation 
of reflection. 



Appendix C 325 

We may say, then, that while the category of unity does 
represent the aesthetic ideal, still it is only in imaginative 
semblance, in the schema or sketch of unity present to the 
self for its contemplation, that this ideal is embodied. The 
unity of judgment may, however, be so presented. In 
science and morals, on the contrary, while the unity of 
content is preserved, the act of judging intervenes to 
disturb the ideal unity of aesthetic feeling. The unity of 
objective content as such is merely that of cognitive indi- 
viduation and recognition, appreciated by feeling in general 
as pleasing or displeasing, but not always by aesthetic feel- 
ing as ideal and beautiful. For aesthetic feeling, the dual- 
ism of self and object, established by judgment, must be 
overcome, in order that the self may absorb its content and 
live in it. 

APPENDIX C 



The philosophical views of Mr. F. H. Bradley'^ touch 
closely upon those developed in our work, while at the same 
time illustrating a different method and reaching different 
final conclusions. It may be of interest to bring this out 
in a few sentences. ^ 

I. Mr. Bradley holds, as I understand him, the follow- 
ing positions — (i), that absolute reality is present to experi- 
ence, that is (2), to an experience of immediacy, which 
immediacy (3), is that of feeling or "sentience"; further, 
(4), that knowledge, proceeding by judgment, renders the 
real in forms which are never free from contradiction and 
relativity, although (5), its ideal is the absolute unity of the 
Whole. Absolute reality, therefore (6), cannot be identi- 

'F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, 2nd ed., and Essays on 
Truth and Reality (19 14). 

' Naturally it is impossible to do justice, in such a brief statement, 
to Mr. Bradley's very subtle and original views, or even to be sure 
of not misrepresenting them. 



326 Appendix C 

fied with thought, nor can its method of development or 
change be that of the dialectic of thought processes (as 
in Hegel). Similarly, (7), there is no absolute error or 
falsehood, as there is no absolute truth, attaching to judg- 
ment, since all judgment "qualifies" reality in some partial 
way, and relative truth and reality adhere in all empirical 
process. Finally, (8), it is in a higher immediacy, hyper- 
logical in its character, in some sense qualified as personal, 
that the Absolute is to be found. ^ 

2, On all these points our own results support the 
positions of Mr. Bradley, as different as are the grounds on 
which the respective conclusions in these several fields evi- 
dently rest, and as different as are the interpretations of 
reality finally arrived at. 

3. In reaching his final conclusions, Mr. Bradley takes 
what has the appearance of a plunge into ontology^ — 
purely logical and unexperiential in its motive and result. 
Absolute reality is a whole, present in the immediacy of 
sentience, but incapable of further definition or appreciation 
for what it really is; since the objectifying functions which 
aspire to render it only succeed in masking it. They mis- 
represent the whole in asserting and qualifying the parts. 

Nevertheless, experience belongs to a "finite centre" — 
each person has one — before which "the whole universe 

^ In his new book, Essays on Truth and Reality, Mr. Bradley gives (pp. 
417-18) a resume from which I quote the following sentences: "We have 
(i), an immediate felt whole, without any self or object. Next, (2), 
where we find an object against the self, this opposition is still a content 
within a totality of feeling. . . . Further (3), the self, although not 
yet an object, is experienced content, and it is a limited content and is 
so felt. (4), On the nature of that limited content felt as self . . . 
there is much of it which from time to time has come before us as object- 
ive, and on the other hand there are elements which remain throughout 
in the background. And all this will be true even of that central group 
on which our personality seems to rest." In other words, the objective 
self (and the personality) is a content wherein "that finite centre, within 
which and before which the whole Universe comes," takes on partial 
and special form. 

^ Cf. above, chap, xii., sect. 10. 



Appendix C 327 

comes. " The absolute experience, therefore, although one 
of feeling, is not one of mere uninformed and crude feeling. 
It is not a sentience without rational and practical content, 
but a sort of super-personality — by implication at least — 
which has the logical or metaphysical value of all possible 
predicates of truth and worth, although not able to disclose 
these predicates in actual judgments. The whole is present 
in sentience, but, do the best it can, the whole cannot make 
itself fully or properly evident in the form of "appearance. "^ 
4. From this our own result differs sufficiently, despite 
much preliminary agreement. We have been able to utilize 
certain resources which Mr. Bradley has not drawn upon, 
notably the genetic method, the theories of "community" 
or social intent of judgment and self-hood, the developments 
of practical, affective, and aesthetic logic. Instead, there- 
fore, of resorting to the ontological point of view and reach- 
ing what is after all a logical postulate — that of a "j5nite 
centre" before which absolute reality "comes" in the 
immediacy of sentience — we go on to a "comparative 
morphology" of the modes of function which give partial 
renderings or "appearances" of the real. We find that 
experience itself discloses its own "more excellent way" of 
apprehending the "whole." To us, the whole is realised 
in kind in every work of art; while to Mr. Bradley there 
is a supposed or postulated ontological whole which is not 
realised but merely "touched," so to speak, in a sentient 
contact.^ It is for this contact — to give it metaphysical 
meaning — that the "finite centre "^ is postulated. 

' I venture so much, although Mr. Bradley's latest explanations on the 
subject of the "finite centre" are exceedingly difficult. See his Essays 
on Truth and Reality, chap. xiv. 

^See above, chap, x., sect. 8. 

3 "Within which [i. e. the finite centre] and before which the whole 
universe comes " [italics mine] : Bradley, as quoted above. One is remind- 
ed of the monads of Leibnitz, each of which "presents" the whole 
world; but it is easier to attribute a content to a centre which "presents " 
than to one which merely feels, for the former specifically recognises 
the validity of knowledge. 



328 Appendix C 

5. The difference really proceeds from the radical 
divergence of method signalised in our discussions.^ It 
is instructive to bring this out ; for our own method forbids 
the resort to an ontological point of view, as having superior 
or final validity. We have found ^ in passing that in case 
the synthetic reconciliation of thought and practice — of all 
modes of mediation — both in and with a new immediacy, 
were not to be found in actual experience, aesthetic (as to 
us) or other, then our alternative conclusion would have to 
be realistic and pluralistic, rather than rationalistic and 
monistic (as Mr. Bradley's is). We should have to stop 
where the experience of reality itself stopped : with the recog- 
nition of several modes of existence each equally revealing 
the real, though partially and under its own limitations. 
We could not go on to say that there is a whole, withal 
implicit, which the processes of appearance cannot make 
explicit. 

6. Mr. Bradley, it seems, when all is said, places experi- 
ence and empirical method under the yoke of absolutism, 
by the demand for absolute identity in the real: all differ- 
ence must disappear in absolute identity ; this is the logical 
and metaphysical ideal. This ideal, however, thought fails 
to attain, and so failing, suffers shipwreck. 

But why this ideal? Why not that which experience 
suggests, a "unity in variety," an "identity in difference," 
an organised absolute, not one merely sentient nor one merely 
logical — one blind, the other empty? Such an organised 
reality — the very ideal of the aesthetic — is realised in 
every work of art. It makes all the difference between a 
full, rich, content of realisation and a thin logical absolute 
void of content: between immediate realism and absolute 
rationalism. 

7. It is only here also that the justification of monism is 
to be found; it resides in the demand for unity made by 
esthetic contemplation. The intellectualist and voluntar- 

^ See above, chap, xii., sect. 2. ' Above, chap, xvi., sect. 2. 



Appendix C 329 

ist proofs of monism are unconvincing; each considers its 
own postulate alone final. It is of beauty alone that the 
substance of the following sentence, already penned above, * 
can be asserted; nothing analogous can be said of truth or 
of worth: — "If the world is to be artistic, beautiful, it 
cannot be incoherent, disorganised, radically pluralistic." 
Here and here alone, in our view, is the compelling reason 
for monism, and the certitude, found in immediate experi- 
ence, of the reality and significance of the "finite centre." 

II 

That the general conception of Genetic Logic, and with 
it the term — first employed systematically, so far as I know, 
in the work Thought and Things, or Genetic Logic, and in 
portions of that work published separately — is gaining cur- 
rency, is seen in the character of recent discussions of 
logical problems. The issue is fruitfully joined between 
the metaphysical, "logicist," and Hegelian conceptions, 
on the one hand, and the empirical genetic, on the other. 
In a recent reivison of his work, Logic, for example, one of 
the advocates of the Hegelian form of metaphysical logic 
reprints his criticisms of the present writer's partial theories 
of "imitation" and "selective thinking," and states his 
general reply to "the antagonist," the genetic logician. 
To him and others of the school there can be no "genetic 
logic," in a true sense, because logical principles, being 
absolute and universal, can have no genesis. His criticism 
takes no account of the systematic developments of my 
later volumes — including, of course, the present work — and 
is for that reason ineffective, except as stating his own an- 
tagonistic view. In a similar revision of my replies to this 
writer's original criticisms — soon to be reprinted — I hope 
to bring out fairly the contrast between these two leading 
conceptions. In the meantime, the sections devoted to 

^ Above, chap, xvi., sect. 8. 



330 Appendix C 

the "metaphysician's logic" in the text above, pp. 223 ff, 
and in the Introduction to Vol. I of Thought and Things, 
as well as the Appendices to Vols. II and III of that work, 
replying to other critics, may be referred to, The conse- 
quences following upon this difference of method and point 
of view are even more pronounced than those pointed out 
just above in the case of Mr. Bradley. 



INDEX 



See also the "Glossary" of terms immediately following the 
text, reference to which is not made under the corresponding terms in 
this Index. 



Absolute, of Fichte and Hegel, 
197; a. beauty, 271 f. 

Acceptance, Eesthetic, 287; c/. 
Negation, and Privation 

Actuality theories, 149, 152 ff. 

Adamson, R., 208, 213 f. 

A-dualistic interpretation, 53 ff.; 
the aesthetic as, 238 ff. 

Esthetic, value of myths, 143 f.; 
a. synthesis, 205 ff.; a. contem- 
plation, to Aristotle, 206; to 
Kant, 207; to Schelling, 211; a. 
immediacy, 231 ff., 256 ff.; a. 
synthesis, 231 ff.; a. interest 
synthetic, 235 ff.; a. as a-dualis- 
tic, 238 ff.; a. ideal, 240 f.; a. 
reality, 244 ff ., 303 ff . ; definition 
of, App. B., a. interpretation, 
256 ff.; a. intention, 269 ff.; a. 
reason, 271 f.; a. absolute, 280 
ff.; a. negation, see Privation 

.(Estheticism, 149; see Pancalism 

Affective, generalisation, 68 f.; 
a. memory, 91; a. logic, 231 ff. 

Affectivism, 177, 202 ff.; construc- 
tive, 203 f,; pancalism as a., 
309 f. 

Alexandria, mystics of, 194 f. 

Angels, existence of, 134 f. 

Animism, 59 ff., 75 ff.; spontane- 
ous, 76; affective, 77; reflective, 
79; religious, 98 

Anselm, 103 

Antinomy, religious, 127 f. 

Aristotle, 206 f., 209, 310 

Art, see .Esthetic; a. and play, 
243 ff.; primitive a., 251; as 



synnomic, 252; logic of a., 251 

ff. 
Autotelic interest, 235 ff. 
Avenarius, R., 239 
Awe, religious, 88, 104 



B 



Bad, the aesthetic, see Ugly; the 

moral, 247 f., 288 f. 
Bakewell, 202 
Balfour, A. J., 173 
Basch, 208 
Bawden, H. H., 171 
Beauty, see ^Esthetic, and Art; 

absolute b., 271 f. 
Bergson, H., 186 
Berkeley, 184 f. 
Birth, mental, 81 
Boehme, J., 180, 195, 197, 202, 

214 
Bosanquet, B., 199 
Bradley, F. H., 191, 198 f., 223, 

App. C 
Bruno, 214 
Buddhism, 93 



Canon, of progression, 193; c. of 
unity, 219 

Classification, primitive, 65 ; affec- 
tive, 68 f. 

Clifford, III 

Collective, representation, 47 f.; c. 
participation, 61 f. 

Commonness of the aesthetic, 249 f . 

Communal idealism, 183 

Community, see Commonness 



331 



332 



Index 



Completion, immediacy of, 184 ff. 
Composition, fallacy of, 193, 222 
Comte, A., 5, 39, no 
Concurrence in interpretation. 

Contemplation, see ifEsthetic 
Contradiction, logical, 65 
Control, see Dualism 
Creighton, J. E., 199 
Criticism, Kantian, 189 fi. 
Critique, see Criticism, and Kant; 
c. of judgment, 208 f. 



D 



Demons, existence of, 134 f. 
Dependence, religious, 88, 106 
Descartes, 145, 147, 180, 184 f., 

224 
Dessoir, M., 77 
Devil, 133 ff. 

Dogmatic spiritualism, 187 
Dogmatism, 188 
Dualism, Cartesian, 146 f.; d. of 

control, 232 ff. 
Duns Scotus, 204 
Durkheim, 47, 50, 62, 69, 80, 88, 

93.95 2-. ii2f. 



E 



Eckhart, 202 

Einfvihlung, see Personalisation 

(aesthetic), 239 f. 
Ejection, in primitive thought, 

73 f., 81; world-e., in 
Emanations, of Plotinus, 195 f. 
Empathy, see Personalisation 

(cesthetic), 239 f. 
Epistemology (genetic), 3 f.; 

App. A 
Espinas, A., 113 
Ethical ideal, 103 
Excluded middle, 64 
Exclusion, selective, 139 f.; see 

Negation 
Experience, religious, 87 f. 
Experimental logic, App. A. 
Extra-psychic reference, of know- 
ledge, 291 ff.; of the cesthetic, 

296 f. 



Faith-philosophy, 204 ff. 



Fallacy of composition, 193 

Feeling, synthesis of, 201; see 
Aff activism 

Fichte, 196, 211 

Fideism, 205 

Frazer, 89, 143 

Freedom, and nature, 207 ff.; f. 
and necessity, 261 ff. 

French culture, 242 

Fulfilment, theories, 151; im- 
mediacy of f., 266 ff. 

Functional logic, App. A. 

Furry, V/. D., Preface, 6, 25, 201, 
310 

G 

Gaul tier. P., 272 

Generalisation, primitive, 68 f. 

Genetic, interpretation, 3 ff.; g. 
morphology, 3 ff.; g. method, 
220 ff.; g. modes, 237, 306, see 
Mode; g. relativity, 279 

Glossary of terms, 313 ff. 

God, as religious object, 108; as 
world-eject, in; as national 
spirit, 113; as personal, 119 f.; 
to Plotinus, 195 

Gomperz, 202 

Greek philosophy, 146 

Guyau, no 

H 

Hegel, 196, 212, 262 
Heraclitus, 113 
Higher mysticism, 194 ff. 
Hoffding, H., n, 139, 212, 233 
Humanity, religion of, no 
Hume, 184 f. 



Ideal, religious, loi f., 119 f.; 
ethical, 103; aesthetic, 240 f.; 
negative, see Negation, Bad, 
and Ugly 

Idealism, two forms of, 149, 181; 
subjective, 181 ff.; communal, 
183; absolute, 191 

Ideality theories, 149, 165 ff. 

Imagination, its r61e, 26, 30, 140 f.; 
in primitive thought, 83; in 
racial development, 140 f.; sche- 
matic i., 203 f., 209 f.; i, as 
semblance, 231 ff. 



Index 



333 



Imitation in primitive thought, 

73 f- 

Immediacy, theories, 150 f., 1745.; 
i. of primitiveness, 177 f.; i. of 
completion or transcendence, 
184 S.; i. of synthesis, 193 ff.; 
aesthetic i., 231 fif., 256 ff.; i. of 
fulfilment, 266 

Immediate, see Immediacy and 
Immediatism 

Immediatism, 150, 174 ff. 

Immoral, see Bad 

Imperative, religious, 126 f. 

Instinct, religious, 126 f. 

Instrumentalism, 171 

Intellectualism, 152 S. 

Interest, 13 ff.; social, 17 ff.; 
racial, 35 S.; religious, 86 f.; 
aesthetic, 235 ff. 

Interpretation (genetic), I fi.; in- 
dividual, II ff.; progression of, 
21 f.; of realities, 25 f,; racial 
and individual, 32 flE.; stages of, 
38 f.; development of, 43 fi.; 
early racial, 43 ff.; a-dualistic, 
53 ff.; religious, 53, 86; a-logical, 
64 ff.; as social organisation, 67 
ff.; mediate or logical, rise of, 
83 f.; logical, 140 ff.; aesthetic 
256 ff. 

Intrinsic, synthesis, 231 ff.; in- 
terest, 235 ff. 

Introjection, 239 

Intuition, theories, see Intuition- 
ism; aesthetic i., 269 ff. 

Intuitionism, 150, 184 f. 

Irreligious, see Profane 



Jacobi, 204 

James, W., 91 

Judgment, unity of, App. B. 



K 



Kant, 7, 144, 184; K.'s "Criti- 
cism," 188 f., 205 f., 207 ff., 
218 f., 265 f., 309, 311 

Knower, and known, see Know- 
ledge; k.'s logic, 220 ff.; point of 
view of, 300 ff. 

Knowledge, limits of, 155 ff.; 
validity of, 163 f., 291 ff.; k. as 
extra-psychic reference, 292 f. ; 
as trans-subjective, 292 ff. 



Leibnitz, 183, 184, 328 

Leuba, 105 

L^vy-Bruhl, L., 43, 47, 48, 56, 62, 

88 
Lipps, Th., 231 
Logic, real, 3 ; genetic, 3 ; religious 

107 ff.; three kinds of, 220 ff. 

affective, 231 f.; of art, 251 ff. 

divisions of genetic, App. A 
Logical, interpretation, rise of, 

83 f., 140 ff.; 1. theories, 148 f. 
Logicism, 220 ff. 
Lotze, 3 f., 7, 183, 215 
Love, platonic, 195, 201 f. 

M 

Maine de Biran, 171 

Malebranche, 184 

Materialism, 149, 164 

Meaning, religious, logic of, 107 ff. 

Mediate interpretation, 83 f. 

Mediation theories, 149, 151 ff. 

Meinong, 116 

Metaphysician's logic, 223 ff., 330 

Method, genetic, 220 f.; advan- 
tages of, 227 

Mode, of interpretation, 39; gene- 
tic m., 237 f. 306; aesthetic m., 
283 f., 

Moralism, 149, 171 f. 

Morphology, genetic, 3 ff.; of 
reality, 189 f.; App. A 

Mysticism, of primitive interpre- 
tation, 57 f., 75 ff.; m., as 
theory, 150; primitive m., 179; 
higher m., 194 ff.; m. of the 
Renaissance, 203 f. 

Myth, 141 ff. 



N 



Naturalism, 149 

Nature and freedom, 207 f. 

Necessity, logical, 22 1 ; n. and 
freedom, 261 ff. 

Negation, privative, 50 f.; re- 
ligious, 118, 129 ff.; aesthetic, 
290 f. See Privation, 

Non-religion of the future, no f. 
See Secular 

Noumenal, the, 188 ff. 



334 



Index 



o 



Object, religious, 92 f., 118 f.; 

as ideal, loi f.; eesthetic o. a- 

dualistic, 238 f. 
Ontological point of view, 224 ff. 
Ormond, A. T., Preface, 183, 215; 

App. B. 



Pancalism, Preface, 150, 177, 

275 ff., 300 ff. 
Pantheism, 150 
Participation, 62 
Paulsen, 88 

Personal religious object, 92 f. 
Personalisation, jee Animism; ees- 

thetic, 239 ff., 298 
Personality, synthesis of, 194, 259 
Phenomenal, the, 188 ff. 
Philo, 194 f. 
Philosophy (ical) of religion, 138 f. ; 

conclusion, 275 ff.; corollaries, 

303 ff- 

Plato, 119, 180, 202, 206; see Pla- 
tonic love 

Platonic love, 201 ff. 

Play and art, 243 ff. 

Plotinus, 180, 194 ff.; 202, 309 

Pluralism, moral, 171 f.; philoso- 
phical, 307 f. 

Positivism, 149, 165 f. 

Postulate, religious, 123 ff.; p. 
of value, 216 ff. 

Practical interest, 269 f. 

Pragmatism, 149, 171 

Prelogical interpretation, 43 ff.; 
p. thought as a-dualistic, 53 f. 

Presupposition of truth, 216 ff. 

Primitive, interpretation, 43 ff.; 
p. negation, 50 ff.; interest and 
organisation, 67 ff.; imitation 
and ejection in, 73 f.; theories 
based on the p., 174 ff.; p. art, 

251 

Privacy of the aesthetic, 251 
Privation, 51 f.; religious, 130 f.; 

aesthetic, 245 f., 290 f. 
Privative. See Privation 
Profane, the, 88, 132 ff. 
Progression, of interpretation, 

21 f.; canon of, 193 
Projective experience, 26 
Psychosophy, 77 



Pythagoras, 144 



R 



Racial interpretation, 32 £E.; as 
social interest, 35 ff.; general 
character of, 43 ff.; social 
character of, 46 ff.; as syndoxic, 
49 f . ; a-dualistic, 53 ff . ; mystical, 
57 f.; as animistic, 59 ff.; as a- 
logical, 64 ff. 

Real logic, 3 f., App. A. 

Realisation, theories, 150 f.; aes- 
thetic, 260 ff., 277 f. 

Reality, as interpreted, 25 ff.; 
profane r., 135 f.; religious, 

118 ff.; Eesthetic, 244 ff., and 
see .(5)sthetic; meaning of r., 
275 f.; r. as experience, 294 f.; 
nature of r., 303 ff. 

Reason, aesthetic, 271 f. ; as feel- 
ing, 272 

Reconciliation, aesthetic, 266 ff.; 
immediacy of, 266 f. 

Reference, external r. of know- 
ledge, 291 ff.; extra-psychic 
292 f.; trans-subjective 293 -f. 

Reflection, problem of, 145 f. 

Reid, 184 

Rejection, religious, 129 f. 

Relativity, sorts of, 279 ff.; 
genetic, 279, 283 f.; r. of nega- 
tion, 286 f.; r. of knowledge, 
291 ff. 

Religion, 86 ff.; subjective and 
objective, 91; as social interest, 
105; logic of, 107 ff.; social 
character of, 109 f.; of human- 
ity, no, 137 f.; philosophy of, 
138 f.; as organ of value, 139 f.; 
see Religious, and Ideal 

Religious interpretation, 86 ff.; 
r. interest, 86 f.; r. experience, 
87 f.; r. object, 93 f., 118 f.; 
r. animism, 98; r. ideal, loi f., 

119 f.; r. negation, 118 ff., 129 
ff. ; r. imperative, 126 f.; r. in- 
stinct, 126 f.; r. antinomy, 
127 f. 

Renaissance, mystics, 203 f. 
Respect, religious, 80, 104 f. 
Ribot, Th., 231 
Rignano, 164 
Roberty, 164 
Romanes, iil 



Index 



335 



Sacredness, 87, 95 f.; diffusion of, 

137 

Saint Augustine, 60, 145, 171, 180 

Satan, see Devil 

Schelling, 191, 310 

Schematism of Kant, 203, 209 

Schiller, 215, 262 

Schleiermacher, 88 

Schopenhauer, 212, 262 

Secular, growth of the, iii, 129 ff. 

Semblance, imaginative, 140 f., 
231 f. 

Sensationalism, 150 

Singular, the esthetic, 249 ff. 

Social interests, 17 ff.;s. character 
of religion, 109 f. 

Socrates, 57 

Solipsism, 181 

Sophists, 57 

Spinoza, 198 

Spiritualism, 149, 164, 187 f. 

Stages, of interpretation, 38 f.; 
of thought, no 

Stratton, G. M., 125 

Subjectivism, 181 

Summum malum, 133 f. 

Super-personal, the, 198 f. 

Sympathy, assthetic, see Per- 
sonalisation (esthetic); 239 f., 
298 

Syndoxic interpretation, 49 f. 

Synnomic force of art, 252 f., 
297 f. 

Synthetic ideal, 24.0 f. 

Synthesis, immediacy of, 193 ff., 
of personality, 194; of feeling, 
201 ff.; aesthetics., 205 ff.; 312 
ff.: intrinsic s, 231. ff. 



Taboo, 52 

Tauler, 202 

Theism, 149, 171 f. 

Theoretical, see Knowledge; 

t. interest, 269 f. 
Totemism, 50 ff., 131 f. 
Transcendence, immediacv of, 1 74 

f., 184 ff. 
Transition to the logical, 140 ff. 
Trans-subjective, reference of 

knowledge, 292 ff.; of the 

assthetic, 297 f. 
Truth, presupposition of, 216 ff. 
Tylor, E. B., 89, I55 



U 



Ugly, the, 246 f., 287 f. 

Unity, canon of, 219; aesthetic, 

App. B. 
Universal, the aesthetic, 249 f. 
Universality, logical, 221 
Urban, W. M., 7, 171, 301, 312 



Value, religion as, 138 f.; postu- 
late of , 216 ff. 

Voluntarism, 149, 165 ff.; exami- 
nation of, 167 ff. 

W 
Warren, H. C, 66 

Z 
Zenophanes, 93 



Putnam 's 
Science Series 



1. The Study of Man. By A. C. Haddon. 

2. The Groundwork of Science. By St. George Mivart. 

3. Rivers of North America. By Israel C. Russell. 

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Geikie. 

5. Volcanoes : Their Structure and Significance. By T. G. 

Bonney. Revised Edition. 

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7. A Boolt of WhaJes. By F. E. Beddard. 

8. Comparative Physiology of the Brain, etc. By Jacques Loeb. 

9. The Stars. By Simon Newcomb. 

10. The Basis of 5ocial Relations. By Daniel G. Brinton. 

11. Experiments on Animals. By Stephen Paget. 

12. Infection and Immunity. By George M. Sternberg. 

13. Fatigue. By A. Mosso. 

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34. Genetic Theory of Reality. By James Mark Baldwin. 



Thought and Things, or Genetic Logic: 

A Study of the Development and Meaning of Thought 
By JAMES MARK BALDWIN, LL.D., etc 

Lately Professor in Princeton and Johns Hopkins Universities, 
Foreign Correspondent of the Institute of France. 

Vol. I. Functional Logic, or Genetic Theory of Knowledge 

Prof. J. E. Russell, in Journ. of Philos. — "I record my fullest appreciation of a 
notable book, one that cannot fail to add to the author's already splendid reputation, 
and one which will enlarge not a little our knowledge in a great field of science. 
. . . The time has come for the reconstruction of the entire discipline of logic. A 
reconstruction of logic on the basis of a genetic explanation of our actual knowledge 
seems to be manifest destiny in the light of Professor Baldwin's present work. " 

C. S. Peirce, in The Nation. — "This is a most earnest, profound, laborious system- 
atic analysis of cognition, such as cannot fail to be of continual utility to students of 
psychology. It appears to be a signal setting forth of science — what the Germans 
would call an ' epoch-making ' book. The vocabulary of well-considered new terms 
is in itself a precious gift to psychological investigation. For with each of these new 
terms there goes a valuable new conception. The publication must serve as a pre- 
cious landmark in future investigation, in that it lays down for the first time a 
definite project of structure of the theory of cognition in great detail. " 

Prof. Buchner, in a r6sum6 of "Psychological Progress in 1906." — "The genetic 
method has been wielding an influence shaking up the old distinctions; but there has 
not been such a traversing of the whole psychological field solely by its intellectual 
right and its scientific authority as that made by Baldwin's Thought and Things. 
It promises a complete reconstruction of psychology and also of the cognate philo- 
sophical disciplines of logic and epistemology, leaving the time-honoured distinctions 
far behind. The achievement can be interpreted as an age-movement, and be 
closely related to the current intellectual need which has been finding widespread 
satisfaction in pragmatism." 

Prof. Creighton, in the Philosophical Review.— ''Wor'ked out with great thor- 
oughness of detail and a comprehensive grasp of guiding principles — one cannot fail 
to recognize the importance of the problem and the real value of his results." 

Prof. A. W. Moore, in the Psychological Bulletin. — "This is the most comprehen- 
sive attempt in logic yet made in America. The fact that such a programme is of- 
fered and the general standpoint and method of treatment are further evidence that 
philosophy in America is rapidly passing from the absorbing, translating, albeit 
necessary period of German apprenticeship into a free creative advilthood. " 

Nature. — "The first instalment of what promises to be an important inquiry into 
the actual movement of the function of knowledge. Prof. Baldwin's account of the 
process by which cognition is built up is so coherent that it is impossible to give 
more than a fraction of its substance. But one finds that the writer has always 
something true and important to say. " 

Vol. II. Experimental Logic, or Genetic Theory of Thought 

Edinburgh Scotsman. — "Three volumes are to go to the full making of the valuable 
and elaborate treatise upon logic, of which this is the second. It expounds experi- 
mental logic, explains how the process of thinking goes on, and examines the sanc- 
tions of logical validity and the dualisms and limitations of thought. The book is 
full of matter, and this volume well maintains the promise of its predecessor that 
the complete treatise will rank as one of the most important among recent contri- 
butions to the literature of philosophy. " 

AlhencBurn. — "The time has not yet come to attempt an estimate of the general 
worth of this ambitious effort to construct a systematic logic on genetic lines. The 
third volume is not written. Meanwhile we congratulate Prof. Baldwin — a thinker 
of great vigour and ability — on having accomplished another lap in his long course. 
It is very interesting to observe how America having served its philosophical appren- 
ticeship is now devoting its matured powers to every branch of philosophy in turn. 



Ttoaght and Things, or Genetic Logic — Continued 

Logic in particular has recently been taken in hand. The present volume belongs 
to the same movement. It displays a predominant interest in genesis, and con- 
siders thinking and thought in live and organic relation to the mental economy as a 
whole." 

Prof. W. H. Sheldon, in th.& Psychological Bulletin. — "This second volume, 

while lacking nothing in organic unity, contains a wealth of topics of which a review 
can give no adequate idea. Prof. Baldwin has shed new light upon many old logical 
problems and (what is rare enough in logical treatises) has really contributed to our 
knowledge in several respects. These contributions, together with a broad-minded- 
ness which can combine opposite extremes of theory, are, in our view, the chief 
merits of the work. There is no recent book in English which has covered the field 
so fully, in so empirical a spirit, yet with such philosophical and logical power of 
interpretation. The author _ is able to find a place for the practical, theoretic, 
Eesthetic, social, even ' logistic ' motives that enter into human thought, to justify 
each and to restrain each to its proper limits. It is not easy to say which of the 
author's special views seems to us most important: on the whole, however, we think 
the dualism of content and control is probably the most fertile contribution. We 
agree that every treatment of either the logic or the psychology of cognition should 
proceed along these lines. Prof, Baldwin has surveyed and mapped a region which 
should now be settled by the logician. " 

Prof. Creighton, in Darwin and Logic. — "What seems to me especially signi- 
ficant in Mr. Baldwin's work is the account of the stages and rneans through which 
the individual mind develops a fully conscious logical experience. It is in part 
the same undertaking that Hegel left so incomplete. The progress of biology and 
psychology has made it possible for Prof. Baldwin to present a concrete working 
out of this problem which is an immense advance on anything that previously 
existed. " 

Dr. K. Schalk, in the Rivista di filosofia. — "Every one must join in admiration of 
this [work] which is full of new researches, original thoughts, and serious work, 
especially when it is compared with the leanness of most logical treatises. One of its 
merits is that it clears up many of the points at issue between Pragmatism and the 
old Philosophy. " 

Vol. III. Interest and Art, Genetic Epistemology 

The Cambridge Magazine. — " Pancalism. A new word has been added to our 
language — and a new dignity to Art. Where may we look for ultimate reality? The 
question has become quite fashionable lately, thanks to Bergson and Mr. McCabe. 
Curiously enough, Pancalism hails from America; and is the name which Pro- 
fessor James Mark Baldwin, the famous genetic psychologist, gives to the philo- 
sophy of Art which he is slowly elaborating. It appears for the first time in the 
latest addition to his great work. Thought and Things, viz. Volume III., 'Interest 
and Art ' — a masterly contribution to the literature of assthetics. There are, it is urged, 
three kinds of immediacy: (i) Of primitiveness (worshipped by Professor William 
James); (2) of transcendence (we are left to infer from page 47 thatthis includes 
the reality of Bradley and Bergson) ; (3) of reconciliation. _ And it is to the im- 
mediacy of sesthetic experience alone that Professor Baldwin allows the term real 
(p. 254). For_ffisthetic experience conserves all the highest values both of the 
actual and the ideal. It gives free play to imaginative construction; and its wholes 
are constituted as if actual, embody personal ends, and symbolize completed ideals 
and a completed life. We thus have an outline of the Esthetic Immediacy for 
which, as we have stated, the term Pancalism (to kcXov -nav) has been chosen, and 
to which the concluding volume of the whole work will be devoted.'! 

Glasgow Herald. — " A brilliant achievement . . • , the first great work .... 
to expound the logical significance of the new psychology and the philosophical 
theories inspired by it ... The author, after a luminous and careful inquiry into 
the various ways in which Reality is mediated .... in the true and the good, 
finds in aesthetic experience the necessary reconciliation. He would call his 
theory Pancalism, signifying thereby the doctrine of an aesthetic contemplation 
which takes up all the values of experience into a higher self." 

London, Allen & Unwin, Ltd. ; New York, Macmillan. 



